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SELECT PROSE 
OF ROBERT SOUTHEY 



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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



SELECT PROSE OF 

ROBERT SOUTHEY 



EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION 

BY 

JACOB ZEITLIN, Ph.D. 

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1916 

All rights reserved 



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Copyright, 1916, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 

Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1916. 



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J. S. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



m 24 1916 
©CI,A427370 



PREFACE 

Some one has estimated that Southey's total pro- 
duction in poetry and prose would fill not far from 
two hundred octavo volumes. All of his writings, 
Southey himself had no doubt, would be reverently 
assembled by a grateful posterity as a fitting monu- 
ment to his genius and industry. More moderate 
persons believed that at least a dozen volumes of 
good prose matter could be gathered from his abun- 
dant stock. But the passage of time has shown one 
possibility to be as remote as the other. It is doubt- 
ful whether anybody since Southey's death has taken 
the trouble even to read through all his prose. Of 
reprints in the last fifty years there have been, aside 
from the " Life of Nelson," a volume of sketches of 
English Sea Heroes from the " Naval History of 
England" and one of selections from "The Doctor." 
No attempt like the present has ever been made to 
give a representation of Southey's prose based on a 
survey of his entire output — reviews and all. 

In restricting this selection to a single volume the 
first consideration had to be its readableness. The 
aim has been to sustain the remark of Professor Oliver 
Elton that "there is room for a pleasing and varied 
anthology from his prose works." Only such pas- 
sages have been chosen as justify themselves intrin- 
sically. Their representative character has been a 
secondary consideration, but it has fortunately been 
possible to give specimens of Southey's prose in a 
considerable variety of aspects, to suggest nearly all 



VI PREFACE 

the forms in which he worked, and to give an im- 
pression of his mode of Hfe, his opinions, and his 
character. 

In the first selection the reader will have a glimpse 
of Southey in his favorite environment, letting his 
mind stray fondly among his cherished books. Then 
comes a series of descriptions of the lake country 
which, says Professor Elton, are Southey's best title 
to be called a "lake poet." Southey's personal feel- 
ings and tastes have ample play in these passages, 
and hardly less in "The Doctor," though this book 
aims to tell a story and to present character. 

In the selections from " The Doctor," which con- 
stitute about half the bulk of the volume, considerable 
liberty has been taken with the arrangement of the 
chapters for the purpose of bringing into a somewhat 
closer proximity the episodes of the narrative frame- 
work. The establishment of something like continu- 
ity in the treatment of the events is in the opinion 
of the editor a decided gain, and it is really the only 
practicable scheme in a volume of selections. Those 
chapters whose connection with the general plan is 
of the slightest, which are introduced merely as the 
casual opinions and reflections of Dr. Dove or as 
digressions by the author, are placed at the end. 
There is enough even in the new arrangement to 
give an impression of the rambling, desultory vein 
in which the work was conceived and executed. The 
rest of the material is expository. 

In the choice of historical and biographical pas- 
sages preference was given, for the sake of freshness, 
to less familiar themes, even when their composition 
and style was not up to Southey's highest standard. 
The " Life of Bayard " has been reproduced from 
the Quarterly Reviezv with the omission of some 
characteristic digressions, generally antiquarian in 



PREFACE VU 

interest, with which Southey is often prone to break 
up the course of his narrative. It represents his 
interest in themes of moral and heroic appeal and 
is a pleasant specimen of the quaint, archaic coloring 
of his prose. The account of the siege of Zaragoza 
and of the uprising at Marvam are among the most 
spirited examples of Southey's narrative style and 
they have an additional substantive value in reflect- 
ing his attitude toward the France of Napoleon. 

The description of the Jesuit system in Paraguay 
will offer as good an illustration as can be given in 
a brief compass of Southey's skill in treating impar- 
tially and attractively a subject which is beset with 
controversial difficulties and in which he might have 
been expected to succumb to his strong anti-Catholic 
prejudices. The passage on the Manufacturing Sys- 
tem is to be viewed as an expression of Southey's 
feelings about crying abuses rather than as a fair 
statement of existing conditions. 

Finally there are added a series of excerpts from 
the Common-Place Books, detached sentences and 
paragraphs of miscellaneous observations and reflec- 
tions on Hfe, literature, and society, sometimes of a 
sharpness and depth not paralleled in his other 
writings. 

The introduction aims to give — what has not 
hitherto been available — a systematic account of 
the external history of Southey's prose writings. It 
sets forth his position as a writer on political and 
economic questions and his connection with period- 
ical literature. It sketches the genesis of his under- 
takings in Spanish literature, history, biography, and 
informal prose, and describes the fate that overtook 
his separate ventures. 

It is hoped for this volume that it will gain a new 
hearing for Southey's prose among all lovers of liter- 



VUl PREFACE 

ature and that it will provide an incentive for the 
study of Southey in college courses from which he 
has hitherto been excluded by the want of adequate 
facilities for presentation. 

The following editions have been utilized in making 
up the text : " Letters of Espriella," second edition, 
1808; "Colloquies of Sir Thomas More," second 
edition, 1831 ; "The Doctor," first edition in seven 
volumes, 1834-47, ^.nd the one-volume edition by 
J. W. Warter, 1849; "History of the Peninsular 
War," quarto edition ; for the " History of Brazil," 
the " Life of Bayard," and the " Common-Place Book," 
only a single text exists. The editor has permitted 
himself an occasional alteration in spelling and punctu- 
ation, and has added in footnotes translations of the 
numerous quotations from foreign languages. 

The materials which have been utilized in the intro- 
duction are specifically referred to in the footnotes. 
Chief among them are, of course, the two well-known 
collections of letters : " The Life and Correspondence 
of Robert Southey," edited by his son, Charles Cuth- 
bert Southey, London, 1849- 18 50, ^^ six volumes 
(referred to in the footnotes as Life), and the "Select 
Letters," edited by his son-in-law, J. W. Warter, 1856, 
in four volumes (referred to as Warter). The editor 
owes a general debt of encouragement and stimula- 
tion in the performance of his task to the pages of 
discerning appreciation of Southey's prose in Professor 
Oliver Elton's " Survey of English Literature." To 
Professor Stuart P. Sherman he wishes to express 
his thanks for some useful suggestions in regard to 
the introduction and text. 

University of Illinois, 
January 22, 1916. 



CONTENTS 

FAGB 

Preface v 

Introduction 1 

Life 4 

Political and Economic Ideas 11 

Reviewing and Criticism . . . . . .25 

Spanish Literature . 39 

History 44 

Biography ......... 57 

Miscellaneous Prose 62 

Conclusion — Style — Reputation .... 68 

SELECTIONS 

The Library 77 

Scenes from the Lake Country 87 

Keswick Lake 87 

Wasdale 89 

Walla Crag 92 

Derwentwater 98 

Blencathra — Threlkeld Tarn — The Cliffords . . 102 

Phenomena of the Lake Country ..... 119 

The Doctor, etc 123 

Elucidation from Henry More and Dr. Watts. An 
incidental opinion upon Horace Walpole. The stream 
of thought " floweth at its own sweet will." Pictures and 
books. A saying of Mr. Pitt's concerning Wilberforce. 
The author explains in what sense it might be said that 

he sometimes shoots with a long bow .... 123 

Birth and parentage of Doctor Dove ; with the descrip- 
tion of a yeoman's house in the West Riding of Yorkshire 

a hundred years ago 131 



X CONTENTS 

The Doctor, etc. page 

A collection of books none of which are included 
amongst the publications of any society for the promo- 
tion of knowledge religious or profane. Happiness in 
humble life 136 

Rustic philosophy. An experiment upon moonshine . 143 

A kind master and a happy schoolboy .... 149 

One who was not so wise as his friends could have 
wished, and yet quite as happy as if he had been] wiser. 
Nepotism not confined to popes ..... 151 

Showing how the young student fell in love, — and 
how he made the best of his misfortune .... 156 

Of the various ways of getting in love. A chapter 
containing some useful observations, and some beautiful 
poetry 160 

The author's last visit to Doncaster .... 164 

A truce with melancholy. Gentlemen such as they 
were in the year of our Lord 1747. A hint to young 
ladies concerning their great-grandmothers . . 167 

Society of a country town. Such a town a more favour- 
able habitat for such a person as Dr. Dove than London 
would have been ........ 170 

Transition in our narrative preparatory to a change in 
the Doctor's life. A sad story suppressed. The author 
protests against playing with the feelings of his readers. 
All are not merry that seem mirthful. The scaffold a 
stage. Don Rodrigo Calderon. Thistlewood. The world 
a masquerade, but the Doctor always in his own character 176 

Rash marriages. An early widowhood. Affliction ren- 
dered a blessing to the sufferers ; and two orphans left, 
though not destitute, yet friendless 186 

A lady described whose single life was no blessedness 
either to herself or others. A veracious epitaph and an 
appropriate monument 190 

A scene described which will put some of those readers 
who have been most impatient with the author in the best 
of humour with him 194 

More concerning love and the dream of life . . . 197 

An early bereavement. True love its own comforter. 
A lonely father and an only child 200 

Mr. Bacon's parsonage. Christian resignation. Time 
and change. Wilkie and the monk in the Escurial . . 204 



CONTENTS XI 

The Doctor, etc. pack 

A remarkable example, showing that a wise man, when 
he rises in the morning, little knows what he may do 
before night 209 

A word of Nobs, and an allusion to Caesar. Some cir- 
cumstances relating to the Doctor's second love, whereby 
those of his third and last are accounted for . . . 216 

A transitional chapter, wherein the author compares his 
book to an omnibus and a ship, quotes Shakespeare, 
Marco Antonio de Camos, Quarles, Spenser, and some- 
body else, and introduces his readers to some of the 
heathen gods, with whom perhaps they were not ac- 
quainted before 223 

Difference of opinion between the Doctor and Nicholas 
concerning the hippogony or origin of the foal dropped 
in the preceding chapter . 227 

Obsolete anticipations ; being a leaf out of an old 
almanac which, like other old almanacs, though out of 
date is not out of use 230 

Rowland Dixon and his company of puppets . . 237 

Quack and no quack, being an account of Doctor Green 
and his man Kemp ........ 246 

The Doctor's contemporaries at Leyden. Early friend- 
ship. Cowper's melancholy observation that good dis- 
positions are more likely to be corrupted than evil ones 
to be corrected. Youthful connections loosened in the 
common course of things. A fine fragment by Walter 
Landor 250 

Matrimony and razors. Light sayings leading to grave 
thoughts. Uses of shaving 258 

A poet's calculation concerning the time employed in 
shaving, and the use that might be made of it. The Lake 
poets Lake shavers also. A protest against Lake shaving 264 

The poet's calculation tested and proved . . . 267 

An anecdote of Wesley, and an argument arising out 
of it, to show that the time employed in shaving is not 
so much lost time ; and yet that the poet's calculation 
remains of practical use ....... 271 

The Doctor's ideas of luck, chance, accident, fortune, 
and misfortune. The Duchess of Newcastle's distinction 
between chance and fortune, wherein no-meaning is mis- 
taken for meaning. Argument in opinion between the 



xii CONTENTS 

The Doctor, etc. page 

philosopher of Doncaster and the philosopher of Norwich. 
Distinction between unfortunately ugly and wickedly ugly. 
Danger of personal charms ...... 276 

Opinions of the Rabbis. Anecdote of Lady Jekyll and 
a tart reply of William Whiston's. Jean D'Espagne. 
Queen Elizabeth of the quorum quarum quorum gender. 
The society of gentlemen agree with Mahomet in suppos- 
ing that women have no souls, but are of opinion that the 
devil is an hermaphrodite ....... 280 

Value of women among the Afghans. Ligon's History 
of Barbadoes, and a favourite story of the Doctor's there- 
from. Claude Seissel, and the Salic Law. Jewish thanks- 
giving. Etymology of mulier, woman, and lass ; — from 
which it may be guessed how much is contained in the 

limbo of etymology 285 

Variety of stiles 292 

A wishing interchapter which is shortly terminated, on 
suddenly recollecting the words of Cleopatra, — " Wishers 
were ever fools " ........ 296 

St. Pantaleon of Nicodemia in Bithynia — his history, 
and some further particulars not to be found elsewhere . 298 

The Story of the Three Bears 305 

Memoir of the cats of Greta Hall 310 

The Life of Bayard 319 

The Peninsular War 365 

The siege of Zaragoza ....... 365 

The uprising at Marvam 386 

The System of the Jesuits in Paraguay. . . . 391 

The Manufacturing System 416 

Opinions and Reflections from the Common-Place 

Books 424 

Personal Reflections 424 

Literature 426 

Politics 434 

Economics 434 

Religion and the State 435 



SELECT PROSE 
OF ROBERT SOUTHEY 



INTRODUCTION 



Few persons have ever found it possible to speak of 
Southey with any great degree of detachment. The 
character of "saint" half sneeringly fixed on him by 
one of his contemporaries almost stands realized 
in the loving pages of Dowden's biography — the 
man of exemplary home Hfe, fulfilling perfectly the 
duties of husband, father, friend, tender and kind 
and devoted to his own, humane and generous to 
strangers who called on his resources (already suffi- 
ciently strained to meet the needs of a frugal house- 
hold economy) , a man of impeccable honor unstained 
by the common worldly corruptions, living a life of 
bookish industry and self-denial in the pursuit of the 
highest literary and moral ideals. These admirable 
and endearing traits fade considerably before the 
dry light of Leslie Stephen's scrutiny. Though his 
judgment is not blind to Southey's merits and though 
he treats his failings with a kindly indulgence, yet 
the impression left by his sketch is that of a small 
intellect and a large self-conceit, a narrow vision 
and an enormous self-complacency, a great activity 
and an insignificant achievement.^ The difference 
between Dowden's estimate and that of Sir Leslie 
is perhaps only a difference of emphasis conditioned 
by individual points of view, but it is nevertheless 
suggestive of the mixed feelings which Southey arouses 

^ Studies of a Biographer, vol. IV. 



2 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

in the least biassed readers. Even when it is only a 
question of the merits of his achievement, the judg- 
ments are likely to be as far apart as Thackeray's 
eulogy when he says of Sou they that "no man has 
done more for literature by his genius, his labors, and 
his Ufe," ^ and the extravagant contempt of Bagehot, 
who pronounces him "an industrious and calligraphic 
man, who might have earned money as a clerk and 
yet worked all his days for half a clerk's wages, at 
occupation much duller and more laborious." ^ 

That it is the latter verdict toward which posterity 
leans is proved by the neglect in which practically 
all of Southey's prose has been allowed to remain. 
And the result is in a great degree due to the exag- 
gerated claims which Southey himself made for his 
work. His inability to estimate the nature of its 
value has provoked his critics to deny him his just 
measure of recognition. The enormous volume of 
his output, too, — most of it in service of the occa- 
sion — has discouraged students from attempting 
a detailed appraisal of its entirety and from glean- 
ing those pages that are unspoiled by time as the 
memorial of a prose style universally admired for its 
classic purity and grace. The object of the follow- 
ing pages is to survey Southey's activities in prose, 
to pass in review his numerous contributions, through 
periodicals and separate publications, on literature, 
on travels, on history and biography, on poUtics 
and economics, on church and state. Such a sur- 
vey will reveal the importance of Southey's work in 
his own day, will explain the nature of the prestige 
which he enjoyed, and, while it will fully account for 
his not being read now (save in his letters and the 

^ Works, ed. Trent and Henneman, XXV, 113. 
2 Literary Studies, ed. Hutton, I, 50. 



INTRODUCTION 3 

Life of Nelson), it should at the same time justify 
the attempt made in the body of this volume to re- 
store to life the pages of entertaining self-portrayal, 
of spirited narrative, and delightful description which 
are concealed among his works. 



LIFE 

Robert Southey was born August 12, 1774, the 
son of a Bristol linendraper. His early education 
was conducted at Bath under the eyes of a maiden 
aunt, Miss Elizabeth Tyler, a lady whose benevo- 
lence was qualified by an imperious temper. At her 
house the boy was allowed to indulge a propensity 
for omnivorous reading. He first attended certain 
minor schools and in 1788 was entered at Westminster 
School. Here he developed very earnest opinions 
on the subject of flogging and expressed them ironi- 
cally in the school magazine, The Flagellant. The 
authorities felt that their dignity had been injured and 
Southey was privately expelled. He went up to 
Oxford and on account of his offence was refused 
admittance at Christ Church College, but accepted 
by Balliol, November 3, 1792. At Oxford Southey 
pursued such avocations as he found congenial. He 
devotedly read Epictetus and began the composition 
of his first epic, "Joan of Arc." In June, 1794, he 
met Coleridge and was fired by that poet's scheme 
for an ideal community which was to be established 
on the banks of the Susquehanna. Both Coleridge 
and Southey having been already disappointed in 
their hopes of the French Revolution, they thought 
to find the realization of their youthful dreams in a 
country unspoiled by human institutions. A few 
hours of labor would suffice to assure them their 
sustenance and the rest of the time might be spent 
in intellectual discourse or godlike meditation. Be- 

4 



LIFE 5 

fore the material details of this plan could be arranged 
Southey had become engaged to Edith Fricker, and 
in November, 1795, he definitely abandoned Panti- 
socracy, to the great displeasure of Coleridge, and 
married Miss Fricker. It is hard to decide whether 
he displayed more judgment in abandoning Panti- 
socracy than rashness in the marriage. He assumed 
his responsibihty with no apparent means of support 
and without even the resource of a profession. He 
had refused to accede to the wishes of his uncle, the 
Rev. Herbert Hill, at whose expense he had gone to 
Oxford, that he prepare himself for the ministry. He 
had Unitarian leanings at this time which prevented 
him from subscribing conscientiously to the articles 
of the Church of England. Immediately after the 
wedding he left his wife in the care of the sisters of 
Joseph Cottle, the Bristol publisher and patron of 
men of letters, and sailed with Mr. Hill, who was 
Chaplain to the British Factory at Lisbon, for a tour 
of Portugal and Spain. On his return he settled at 
Bristol and wrote his " Letters from Spain and 
Portugal." 

His immediate wants were now relieved by an 
annuity of £160 from his friend Charles Wynn, but 
a profession had to be chosen nevertheless, and so 
Southey with an unwilling spirit removed to London 
and applied himself to the study of law. At the 
same time he established a connection with various 
newspapers and periodicals, wrote verses for the 
Morning Post at a guinea a week, contributed miscel- 
laneous articles to the Monthly Magazine and criti- 
cism to the Critical Review, and worked rapidly at 
his long epics "Madoc" and "Thalaba." He had 
already settled down to his routine of unceasing labor 
in which he allowed himself no other reUef than to 



6 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

change from one kind of work to another. His health 
was breaking under the strain and to save himself 
Southey left England with his wife for a year's stay 
in Portugal, where the climate restored his spirits. 
During this stay he began the earnest collection of 
books and materials for his scholarly labors on the 
history and literature of the Peninsula. Before he 
returned to England (May, 1801), "Thalaba" had 
been published and "The Curse of Kehama" begun, 
and his mind had become filled with ambitious lit- 
erary projects, creative and scholarly, which would 
require a lifetime for their execution. He abandoned 
all thoughts of law, resumed reviewing, and even 
accepted an appointment as private secretary to 
Mr. Corry, Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ire- 
land. This post, however, he held for less than a 
year. 

In 1803 Southey went to visit Coleridge at Greta 
Hall in Keswick and decided to settle there. In the 
following year Coleridge virtually abandoned his 
family to Southey's care and the latter bore the bur- 
den uncomplainingly for twenty-five years. At Kes- 
wick Southey remained during the rest of his life. 
It was not long before he became attached to the 
locality. Here he experienced the domestic joys and 
sorrows which for him were the heart and center of 
life. His affections wound themselves about the place 
with a tenacity of which he was himself hardly aware 
till there was some occasion for a trip to London or 
elsewhere, and then he would suffer the most poignant 
attacks of homesickness and longing for his beloved 
wife and children. Here he collected the impres- 
sive library in which he took a lover's pride and in 
which he was able to work with but few of those 
annoying interruptions to which a man of letters is 



LIFE 7 

subject in the city. From Keswick the flow of his 
publications in prose and verse, through books and 
periodicals, went on uninterruptedly : epic poems 
and occasional verses, translations of some mediaeval 
romances, new editions of others, historical and bio- 
graphical works, works on politics and society and 
religion, critical reviews and anthologies — some 
composed for glory, some for profit, and not a few 
from disinterested friendship. His profit was de- 
rived almost entirely from the periodicals. He 
wrote for the Critical Review till 1804 and for the 
Annual Review from its foundation in 1802 till 1807 
or 1808. From 1808 till 18 10 he contributed the 
historical section to the Edinburgh Annual Register 
at £400 a year. In 1809 he began his work for the 
Quarterly Review, which he was instrumental in estab- 
Hshing as a rival to the Edinburgh Review and for 
which he wrote without interruption to the end of 
his life. 

In 1807 Sou they received a government pension 
which netted him about £150, but this he imme- 
diately offset by resigning the annuity which he 
had been enjoying from Wynn. In 18 13, however, 
his fixed income was augmented by something like 
£100 when he was created Poet Laureate at the 
suggestion of Walter Scott, who had declined the 
honor for himself. This was the entire extent to 
which Southey profited by his services to the gov- 
ernment. Repeatedly during his life he rejected 
offers of positions having secure and comfortable 
salaries attached to them — a severe temptation to 
a man with a large family for whose wants he was 
never able to provide a year in advance. On two 
occasions he was asked to found a government journal, 
in 181 7 he was invited to join in editing The Times 



8 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

at a salary of £2,000 and part of the profits, and in 
18 18 he was offered the post of Librarian to the 
Advocates Library of Edinburgh. Each time Southey 
deliberately considered the matter in every aspect, 
weighing his fitness for the work required of him as 
well as the sacrifice of favorite labors and of inde- 
pendence which he would have to make. His deci- 
sion was in each case dictated by high principles. 
He preferred to continue his hand-to-mouth exist- 
ence, and it was not till 1835 that he was relieved 
from anxiety on account of his daily bread by a pen- 
sion of £300 from Sir Robert Peel. The offer of a 
baronetcy which accompanied this pension was 
declined by Southey with modest dignity. 

Serene as was the course of Southey's life for the 
most part, it was not altogether untroubled. His 
unbending opinions and vehement expressions on 
questions of politics and morality often exposed him 
to the attacks of his opponents, and on two occasions 
his experiences were particularly vexatious. The 
first was in 181 7 and was connected with the surrepti- 
tious publication of "Wat Tyler," a youthful poem 
filled with violent repubhcan sentiments differing 
glaringly from Southey's maturer views. A certain 
Member of Parliament, WilHam Smith by name, 
took advantage of the ludicrous contrast and stood 
up in the House of Commons with the poem in one 
hand and in the other a recent number of the Quar- 
terly Review, and proceeded to read parallel passages 
illustrating the change in Southey's position. Southey 
made vain efforts to have the poem suppressed and 
raged eloquently against Wilham Smith but did 
not succeed in improving his case materially. He 
was unfortunate a second time in giving provocation 
to Byron. On the occasion of the death of George 



LIFE 9 

III Southey fulfilled his Laureate duties by writing 
a commemorative poem, "The Vision of Judgment," 
but went to a rather injudicious extreme in repre- 
senting the apotheosis of that decayed monarch. 
In a preface to the poem he made a bitter attack on 
the "Satanic School" of poetry, which led to an 
exchange of personaHties between Byron and Southey 
and culminated in Byron's "Vision of Judgment," 
a parody of such irresistible and merciless wit 
that it has fixed upon Southey an unfortunate re- 
proach against which the mere Hteral truth is 
helpless. 

But Southey's great sorrows did not spring from 
such sources. The death of children was his deepest 
grief. Before 1816 he had lost two infant daughters 
and in that year he suffered the tragic affliction of 
his life when his favorite son, Herbert, died in his 
tenth year. On this boy of extraordinary beauty 
and promise Southey had lavished his strongest 
affection and about him he had built a father's fond- 
est dreams. His death shook Southey to the inmost 
roots of his nature and extinguished the spark of 
vital ambition. His wonted lightness of spirits 
from this time forth seemed to give way to a settled 
apathy. He resolved never again to attach himself 
too warmly to any object for fear of the pain which 
he might suffer from its loss. The son, Cuthbert, 
who was born to him three years later, never held 
the place in his father's heart which had been filled 
by Herbert. Domestic distress became Southey's 
daily companion when, in 1834, his wife became 
insane and lingered on hopelessly for three years. 
Under the strain of this ordeal and his incessant 
mental labor his own brain began to show signs of 
decay. In 1839 he married CaroHne Bowles, with 



10 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

whom he had carried on a literary correspondence 
for twenty years. To her lot fell the duty of taking 
care of the invalid when, soon after their marriage, 
Southey's mind completely failed him. He lived 
for nearly four years in a helpless but peaceful and 
gentle condition. He died March 21, 1843. 



POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC IDEAS 

There is more than the usual proportion of truth 
in the popular conception of Southey as a reaction- 
ary. He was by temperament a conservative of 
the conservatives. All his affections and prejudices 
were firmly rooted in a bygone age. Progress, he 
thought, was confined to the material and mechanical 
spheres and held out no prospect of an increase in 
human happiness. He had begun life in a country 
blessed with the best form of government the world 
had ever known, a government which secured to its 
subjects the greatest degree of liberty compatible 
with human weakness and which was sanctioned 
by association with the purest of all Christian 
churches. Its institutions had fostered the noblest 
intellects, the greatest poets. Under them the peo- 
ple had dwelt in virtue, happy in the performance 
of their duty to home and country, secure of the 
rightful reward which their blessed religion held in 
store for them. "Happy are they," he exclaims 
in a lovely passage which deserves to be rescued 
from a dusty obhvion, "who grow up in the institu- 
tions of their country, and share like brethren in the 
feelings of the great body of their countrymen ! 
The village spire is that point amid the landscape 
to which their eye reverts oftenest and upon which it 
reposes longest and with most delight. They love 
the music of the Sabbath bells, and walk in cheer- 
fulness along the church path which their fathers 
trod before them. They are not soured by the sight 



12 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

of flourishing institutions which they think evil, 
and therefore wish to overthrow; neither are they 
tempted to seek in the sullen consolations of spiritual 
pride a recompense for the advantages from which 
their own error excludes them. Their ways are 
in light and in sunshine, their paths are pleasant- 
ness and peace ! " ^ 

If men were only wise their single effort would be 
directed toward making permanent such a state of 
affairs. But now a disquieting spirit was abroad in 
the land. The talk was not merely of change, but 
of revolution. Ruin was threatened to all the noble 
institutions that made enviable the Kfe of an EngHsh- 
man. It was as if the legions of Satan had proclaimed 
a new war against the Children of Light. Nothing 
was safe from the assault of the "anarchists." And 
so he girded his loins to combat in defence of the 
good old order, and for many years he was honored 
by his associates as one of their bravest champions. 
As the new generation grew up and Southey saw the 
men of his own party carried ahead by the irresistible 
momentum of the Opposition, he dug his own feet 
more firmly into the ground, resolved to die stand- 
ing though the whole world should fly from its base. 
The figure which he makes in the years after Catho- 
Uc Emancipation grows more and more pathetic, — 
all his gods falHng about him, left far behind by his 
former associates, receiving from friends and enemies 
alike the kind of respect which is offered to one who has 
perhaps done much useful work in his day but whose 
opinions on subjects of importance no longer matter. 

In his youth Southey flirted with some current 
revolutionary principles which later returned to 
plague him. They procured him the reputation 
^ Quarterly Review, x, 139. 



POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC IDEAS 1 3 

of renegade and apostate. The reputation, however, 
was not altogether deserved. He touched pitch, 
but the defilement was not serious. His "Wat 
Tyler" and Pantisocracy were momentary aberra- 
tions induced by the infectious ardor of Coleridge's 
society. He did not permit the poem to see the light 
and he was the first to abandon the allurements of 
Utopia on the Susquehanna. The repubhcanism 
to which he now and then alludes as late as 1807 
is of a very intangible quaHty and runs along easily 
with some High Tory doctrines. Southey vindi- 
cated his poHtical change of front by the same argu- 
ment as Wordsworth and other deeply rooted con- 
servatives. His hopes had soared with the progress 
of the French Revolution, but the excesses which 
had followed in its wake disillusioned him of his 
aspirations. He saw demonstrated the incapacity 
of the people for self-rule, and even before Napoleon 
had begun to cast his ominous shadow over France 
and the rest of Europe, he withdrew to the shelter 
of estabHshed British institutions. Experience, he 
says (by this time he must have been twenty- two), 
has taught him that the improvement of man is a 
delusion. The best service he could render society 
was Kke Noah to ascend the ark and cherish his own 
virtuous life apart, "to preserve a renmant which 
may become the whole." ^ This is a plain prose 
version of the ideal of liberty for the individual 
spirit which Wordsworth and Coleridge chanted in 
lofty verse in the "Prelude" and "France," and 
which they tried to imagine was a substitute for the 
thwarted desire of the masses to enjoy a portion of 
this world's happiness. In Southey the process of 
reaction was accompanied by hardly any of the philo- 

iJLz/e, I, 317. 



14 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

sophic enlargement or the spiritual purgation which 
the views of Coleridge and Wordsworth underwent. 
Wordsworth withdrew altogether from the turmoil 
of active poHtics and Coleridge kept discharging 
hazy speculations over the heads of his dazed ad- 
mirers. But Southey remained nearer the common 
level. At first he found comfort for the misfor- 
tunes of humanity in the conviction that England 
was not as bad as other countries. What he saw 
on his visit to Spain and Portugal made him thank 
God that he was an Enghshman. But the course 
of events in Europe provided him with a stronger 
support for his principles. The growing power of 
Napoleon, his subjugation of one European state 
after another, and the apparent extinction of the 
popular will in France, stimulated in patriotic Eng- 
lishmen the idea that the conditions of true freedom 
were to be reahzed only in accordance with the prin- 
ciples of the British constitution and that their 
country was the natural champion of the Hberties 
of Europe. "I did not fall into the error of those," 
says Southey in defending himself against the charge 
of political apostacy, "who, having been the friends 
of France when they imagined that the cause of 
liberty was impKcated in her success, transferred 
their attachment from the repubhc to the miHtary 
tyranny in which it ended, and regarded with com- 
placency the progress of oppression because France 
was the oppressor. They had turned their faces 
toward the east in the morning to worship the ris- 
ing sun, and in the evening they were looking east- 
ward still, obstinately affirming that still the sun 
was there. I, on the contrary, altered my position 
as the world went round." ^ HazHtt made the sharp 

^ Essays, Moral and Political, II, 21. 



POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC IDEAS 15 

and ready retort that the Poet Laureate continued 
to gaze westward long after the sun had risen again 
in the east. For whatever the arguments which he 
might discover to account for his opinions, it is clear 
that they were founded in a set of mental habits 
with which revolutionary ideas of any kind did not 
assort. 

There is nothing more striking than the precocious 
fixity of Southey's mental attitude. His earliest 
letters reveal the moral young prig. At Oxford in 
his nineteenth year he is shocked by the prevailing 
looseness of conduct and regards himself too much 
to run into any of the common vices. "I have not 
yet been drunk nor mean to be so." It is not re- 
corded of him that he ever was. He sets forth im- 
pressively the arguments against atheism and preaches 
lessons of stoical virtue to his friends. The influence 
of Epictetus, who is frequently in his mouth, is no- 
ticeable in his pure and sober ideals of conduct, 
though of the exalted austerity of the great stoic 
there are but vague traces either in the active or the 
contemplative life of Southey. His ideal of philos- 
ophy he found in the British divines of the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries. His worldly ambition 
aspired to nothing further than "£200 a year and the 
comforts of domestic Hfe." While hardly savoring 
of the inwardness of stoicism, this is sufficiently 
modest and restrained. In reality his characteristic 
virtues are those of a good Christian — a warm 
faithfulness in the performance of his duty to God and 
man as he understood that duty, a touching patience 
under the sufferings imposed by God's inscrutable 
dispensation, and implacable hostility to the Devil 
and all his earthly agencies. This Christianity 
clearly colors his political sympathies at a very early 



l6 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

period. It is in the year 1793 that he composes an 
ode to commemorate the death of "Charles the 
Martyr" and suggests for its motto, "His virtues 
plead Hke angels, trumpet-tongued, against the 
deep damnation of his taking off." ^ It would have 
been strange if with his sensibiKty and his general 
benevolence he should have escaped altogether the 
contagion which seized the generous-minded youth 
of England when Godwin showed them how all evil 
could be banished from the earth. But he cast the 
spell off Ughtly and without much trace of mental 
struggle. 

There is no rational consistency in Southey's views 
on the organization of society. One gets the notion 
that there is no reason why all should not be well in 
the world, yet that somehow or other things were 
far from well, and the explanation (apart from ori- 
ginal sin) was only to be found in the refusal of men 
to conform to the code of life which produced such 
contentment in the poet's own little circle at Kes- 
wick. The ingredients of happiness were all present 
if mankind only knew how to utilize them. This 
was a principle of faith with Southey and not a matter 
of reasoned conviction. Questions that many per- 
sons treated as debatable were for him unassailable 
postulates, as, for example, "that revealed religion is 
true, that the connection between Church and State 
is necessary, that the Church of England is the best 
ecclesiastical estabhshment which exists at present, 
or has yet existed, . . . that a revolution would 
destroy the happiness of one generation and leave 
things at last worse than it found them." ^ In this 
manner he dogmatized on problems which engaged 
the efforts of serious thinkers, and from these and 

1 Life, I, 174. 2 /j^^_^ V, 308. 



POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC IDEAS 1 7 

similar postulates proceeded all his ideas on politics 
and government. 

We may be pardoned for giving a fuller statement 
of these ideas, puerile as they sometimes are, because 
Southey placed a high value on them and because 
he was for many years looked upon as a spokesman 
of the Conservative cause. In the first place he 
beHeved that "under no possible or conceivable form 
of government" could more perfect individual Hberty 
exist, and for poHtical freedom, he asks, "in what other 
age or country, since the beginning of the world, has 
it ever been so secured?" ^ In fact, he was at one 
time very much of the opinion that it was too well 
secured for the Radicals in England, and in 181 6 
he was clamoring vaHantly for a muzzHng of the 
Liberal press and the suppression of Habeas Corpus. 
Not only the laws but their actual operation left 
nothing to be desired. Never has there been "a 
body of representatives better constituted than 
the British House of Commons — among whom 
more individual worth and integrity can be found, and 
more collective wisdom ; or who have more truly 
represented the complicated and various interests of 
the community, and more thoroughly understood 
them." 2 What then is the sense of agitating for 
ParKamentary Reform? The popular representa- 
tives are now against the ministry. If all repre- 
sentatives were to be elected by the people, it is 
obvious that they would all be against the ministry. 
Therefore, he avers with syllogistic conclusiveness, 
"the direct road to anarchy is by ParKamentary 
Reform."^ Moreover, "there are but few poUtical 
evils left for government to amend in this fortunate 

^ Essays, Moral and Political, I, 26. 

Ubid., l,3&i. Ubid., I, 10. 

c 



l8 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

country," hardly anything save perhaps some im- 
provement in the game-laws and the restriction of 
alehouses.^ The betterment in the condition of the 
masses is to be brought about by rehgious and moral 
agencies, by the individual efforts of the benevolent 
rather than by public action. 

Though he seems to speak here of religious and 
moral agencies as independent of the political or- 
ganization, yet he is forever insisting on the necessary 
connection between Church and State. The welfare 
of the State depended on the support of the Church : 
therefore Southey had at heart the cause of popular 
education and refused his sympathy to those who 
feared that the people might be overeducated. "It 
is as impossible that a man, whatever may be his 
condition in life, can be too learned and too wise, 
as it is for him to be too healthy, too active, and too 
strong." ^ But always provided that his education 
be based on rehgion, and that the ofl&cial reUgion of 
the state. "That national education ought to be 
conducted upon the principles of national religion, 
however the enemies of that rehgion may rail against 
the axiom, is so self-evident, that none but those 
who are besotted with sectarian bigotry, or who hav- 
ing clearer heads have yet more mischievous inten- 
tions, can possibly dispute it. . . . Thus should 
we perpetuate as far as is possible by human means 
that constitution of church and state which is the 
pride and strength of England. Esto perpetua is the 
prayer which every true and enlightened patriot 
must breathe for that constitution : the way to render 
it perpetual is by training up the children of the 
people from generation to generation in the way they 

* Essays, Moral and Political, I, 218. 

* Quarterly Review, xxxix, 126. 



POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC IDEAS 1 9 

should go." ^ This is the reason for his unmeasured 
bitterness toward Catholic Emancipation : because 
the Catholic Church also was historically identified 
with a political system and this system was irrecon- 
cilable with the safety and independence of the Eng- 
lish government. 

Such were the political doctrines which Southey 
preached in season and out, before and after his 
association with the Tories. For it was never with 
him a question of thoroughgoing adherence to a 
partisan programme. He did not understand loyalty 
to party as a virtue, and of the time-serving spirit 
he had not the slightest taint. When the Quarterly 
Review was estabhshed as an organ of government 
opinion, he was enhsted among its contributors 
because, aside from the fluency of his pen on mis- 
cellaneous topics, he was known to be ardently in 
favor of the war against Napoleon — at that time 
the most important pohtical issue. He then wrote 
with all the strictness of his convictions and not with 
an eye to what might be thought at headquarters. 
He criticised the conduct of the war with a layman's 
abandon. Often his views did not square with party 
principles and were suppressed or modified by the 
editor. Very commonly his suggestions were more 
drastic than even a reactionary government dared 
to approve. In the troubled years which immedi- 
ately followed Waterloo, Southey attained the sum- 
mit of his influence as a political writer. The pop- 
ular disturbances of this period stirred him to a 
despairing eloquence, and when a new journal was 
thought of to help the Quarterly to stem the onrush- 
ing tide, Southey was invited by representatives of 
government to undertake it. Though he refused 

^ Ibid., vi, 302-4. 



20 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

to take charge, he was ready to support such a journal 
in spite of the inconveniences and perils to which he 
would be subjected.^ His poetic imagination slightly- 
magnified the perils. It actually conjured up for 
him a picture of bloodthirsty Hazlitt and truculent 
Leigh Hunt demanding Robert Southey's head from 
an EngUsh Committee of Pubhc Safety. The dread 
of the guillotine was vividly before him for many 
years, for was there any man whom the "Whigs 
and Anarchists" feared more and on whom they 
would sooner avenge themselves in the event of a 
revolution ? 

But whereas the practical men of the party soon 
recovered from their panic and began to accommodate 
themselves to the inevitable course of events, Southey 
in his impregnable seclusion continued to pour forth 
lamentations on the degeneracy of the age. His 
credit with the pubUc may have been shaken by the 
laughter to which the pirated publication of his 
youthful sin, "Wat Tyler," had exposed him and 
by the controversy with William Smith, M.P., to 
which that publication gave rise. On top of that 
came his absurd "Vision of Judgment" and the 
unlucky quarrel with Byron, against whose unscrupu- 
lous wit Southey's honest indignation offered little 
protection. Signs of weariness begin to appear 
among his friends. The Tory Blackwood's Magazine, 
which is generally friendly, indulges in a burst of 
brutal frankness and declares that "a man would 
as soon take his opinions from his grandmother as 
from the Doctor." - In 1825 Southey himself mod- 
estly expresses a suspicion that his importance to the 
Review is very Uttle, but that is because readers are now 
looking for amusement rather than soHd instruction.^ 
^ Lije, IV, 20s, 209. 2 XV, 209. 2 Lije, V, 239. 



POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC IDEAS 21 

Murray, the publisher, would perhaps like to shake him- 
self free but is prevented by personal regard for the 
man and the usefulness of his services in other branches 
of publication. The letters tell of disagreements 
patched up, of incivilities atoned for, of articles post- 
poned, of attempts to reduce pay successfully resisted. 
Though the significance of these episodes is hardly 
to be misunderstood, to Southey it seems that he is 
emerging triumphant. At any rate he does not 
think of giving up the struggle. He challenges the 
attention of the country with a new literary produc- 
tion, "The Colloquies of Sir Thomas More," in order 
to impress on it the danger to its precious institu- 
tions, and Murray coldly informs him that "the sale 
would have been tenfold greater if religion and poli- 
tics had been excluded from them ! " ^ (The exclama- 
tion point is Southey's.) He persuades Murray to 
reprint the essays from the Quarterly containing 
his political doctrines, because "they are in the 
main as applicable now as when they were written," ^ 
but the public is more deaf to the repetition than 
it was to the original warning. The two modest 
little i2mos did not repay the cost of publication. 
And now that Catholic Emancipation has been 
enacted into law and Parliamentary Reform is not 
as remote as it once seemed, Southey heaves a sigh 
for the passing of the Georgian age, "in part the 
happiest, in part the most splendid, and altogether 
the most momentous age of our history. We are 
entering," he adds, "upon a new era, and with no 
happy auspices." ^ But it was after Reform was 
realized that Southey received the offer of a baron- 
etcy and had bestowed on him a pension which for 

1 Ibid., VI, 73. 2 /j^^ VI, 142. 

^Correspondence with Caroline Bowles, 201. 



22 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

the first time set him free from the worry of earning 
his daily bread. It nowhere appears that he per- 
ceived the irony of his fortune. 

Southey's views on economic questions were as 
purely emotional as on politics, but his feelings here 
served him to better purpose. He must be given an 
honorable place as a forerunner of Carlyle and Rus- 
kin in the attack on the gross one-sidedness of the 
new science. His attitude toward Adam Smith and 
Jeremy Bentham was neither reasoned nor judicious, 
any more than Carlyle's. He knew nothing about 
economics, as the Edinburgh Reviewers repeatedly 
pointed out, but it required no special knowledge to 
reahze that the unqualified acceptance of the cur- 
rent doctrines was subversive of fundamental human 
claims. It needs no research to prove that the treat- 
ment of men as manufacturing animals pure and 
simple is not consonant with any well-ordered social 
scheme. He was moved by pity for the misfortunes 
of the poor and he gave expression to his feelings in 
some of his earliest prose in the Critical and Annual 
Reviews, as well as in the ''Letters of Espriella." 
In its account of this book the Edinburgh Review 
commented on the sentimental quaHty of its econom- 
ics and added the observation, " that there must be 
in all countries, where the population and the arts 
of civilized life have reached a certain point, a class 
of men who pass their days in labor for a pittance 
barely adequate to their subsistence, and who, of 
course, must be continually liable to want and mis- 
ery, from accidents, and the follies and vices incident 
to human nature." ^ This represents the philosophic 
resignation of a class which balanced its own good 
against the sufferings of others. The cold-blooded- 
/xi, 379. 



POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC IDEAS 23 

ness of such a point of view amply excuses any excess 
of feeling in those who assailed it. Though we may, 
therefore, not admit Southey as a competent witness 
when he charges the economists with confused logic, 
we must give him credit for pressing home a much 
needed truth when he rebukes Mai thus for ''writ- 
ing advice to the poor for the rich to read," ^ or when 
he calls the "Wealth of Nations" a hard-hearted 
book which measures the importance of man "not by 
the sum of goodness and of knowledge which he pos- 
sesses, not by the virtues and charities which should 
flow towards him and emanate from him, not by the 
happiness of which he may be the source and centre, 
not by the duties to which he may be called, not by 
the immortal destinies for which he is created ; but 
by the gain which can be extracted from him, by the 
quantum of lucration of which he can be made the 
instrument." ^ While Macaulay and others like 
him were "pointing with pride" to the industrial 
progress of the country, Southey's sympathy was 
aroused by the human sacrifices through which it 
was achieved and his eye was sharpened for the terrible 
consequences which would result if the system were 
unchecked. The reforms which he demanded had 
reasonable aims — to make possible the carrying on 
of the system "consistently with the well-being of 
the persons employed in it, with health and good 
morals — with wholesome intervals for rest and recre- 
ation, as well as for schooling — with the rights of 
human nature, the most indubitable and sacred of 
all rights." ^ He lent an ear to the socialistic schemes 
of Owen of Lanark and the Saint Simonites, in so 
far as they were concerned with improving the condi- 

^ Annual Review, ii, 301. ^ Essays, Moral and Poliiical, I, iii. 
^Quarterly Review, li, 279. 



24 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

tion of the lower orders, though he was strongly 
opposed to their levelling tendencies. He always 
asserted that the poor were too poor, but the rich, 
he maintained, could not be too rich, and the sanctity 
of property was for him as much a cardinal axiom 
as it was for the professional economists. Yet his 
utterances contain a clear forecast of the industrial 
conflicts of the later nineteenth century and a warn- 
ing of catastrophe unless the physical and moral 
condition of the laboring classes is bettered. His 
words sometimes sound like the commonplace of 
present-day social and industrial propaganda, and 
they are the antithesis of the smug satisfaction with 
which the Liberal school of laissez-faire treated the 
great problem. He hved to see the first-fruits of his 
labors. Lord Shaftesbury, it is pointed out by 
Leslie Stephen, applied to Southey as a disciple to 
one of his chief teachers when he took up the subject 
of factory legislation.^ There was, perhaps, some- 
thing of class prejudice in Southey's attacks on the 
manufacturers. Though the poor suffered greatly 
from the Corn Laws, Southey vigorously opposed 
their repeal on the ground that they would injure 
the landed gentry, in whose prosperity, he believed, 
that of the whole nation was involved.^ 

^ Studies of a Biographer, IV, 78. 
^Quarterly Review, li, 228-79. 



REVIEWING AND CRITICISM 

The medium through which Southey chiefly gave 
out his pohtical and other opinions was the reviews. 
Reviewing constitutes a large proportion of his 
writing and it was the steadiest and most important 
source of his income. When he first entered the 
lists as a contributor to the Critical Review in 1798, 
the trade was not very remunerative. The rate was 
four or five guineas a sheet at the most, and the articles 
were not long. But the Edinburgh and the Quar- 
terly Reviews created a market for much longer articles 
at rates beginning with ten guineas a sheet and soon 
rising much higher. Southey himself in time came 
to receive from the Quarterly the flat sum of £100 
for an article of average length, that is, of three or 
four sheets, and on special occasions even more. 
For his paper on the Catholic question in 1829 he 
received £150.^ This will explain why he swallowed 
many scruples, why he overlooked many of Murray's 
displeasing policies and put up with the meddlesome 
editing of Gifford, why he sacrificed the time which 
should have been devoted to gathering the laurels 
of immortality, and continued writing reviews to the 
end. Very seldom was one of those quartos on which 
he spent years of labor as profitable as a month's 
work for the Quarterly Review. And the income was 
indispensable for the support of his large household. 

Southey had very lofty ideas of what reviewing 
should be. The reviewer, he thought, should have 

^ Warter, IV, 121. 

25 



26 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

at least as much knowledge of the subject as the 
author whom he presumed to judge, otherwise he 
was immoral.^ He should treat every author with 
the same humane consideration, with the same re- 
gard for his sensibilities, as he would show to a guest 
in his home. The tone of bitterness which Jeffrey 
adopted toward Montgomery he looked upon as 
brutal and inexcusable. Southey's letters are thickly 
sown with condemnations of the prevailing practice 
of Reviews in general and of every Review in partic- 
ular, nor is he sparing in self-reproach for his own 
share in the unprincipled business. He professes 
contempt and loathing for the craft and is threatening 
on the slightest provocation to wash his hands of it 
completely, but on the other hand he consoles him- 
self with the thought that there are unpleasanter 
ways of earning a living. "It is after all better than 
pleading in a stinking court of law, or being called 
up at midnight to a patient ; . . . better than cal- 
culating profits and loss on a counter." ^ Of course 
all such protestations contain an element of pose, and 
it is clear that he became attached to reviewing by 
something more than the need of earning his living. 
William Taylor of Norwich, who spent nearly all his 
time in reviewing, was in the habit of making similar 
complaints, yet when for any reason the occupation 
was interrupted, he floundered about like a fish on 
land. Reviewing was not uncongenial to Southey's 
literary habits in general, and he sometimes confesses 
it. At least he says, *'it is well for me that I like 
reviewing well enough to feel nothing irksome in 
the employment," and that is probably an under- 
statement of his case.^ 
When Southey began reviewing the profession 
1 Life, II, 352. 2 Ibid., II, 301. ^ Ibid., VI, 56. 



REVIEWING AND CRITICISM 27 

enjoyed very small prestige. The Monthly Review 
and the Critical were then the leading periodicals, 
and whatever might be the value of the scientific, 
philological, or theological matter that comprised 
their chief bulk, their Hterary department was with- 
out distinction. Of the regular contributors of that 
time WilUam Taylor, who wrote for the Monthly 
Review, was the most respectable. For him indeed 
the claim is made of having founded the mode of 
reviewing in which the substance of the volume under 
consideration is enlarged or corrected from the re- 
viewer's own store of information, or made the occa- 
sion of an independent set of observations. Southey, 
too, saw the opportunity afforded by this medium 
for discharging at small cost of labor the accumula- 
tions of learning which he had begun to gather. As 
he had no great respect for the organ to which he 
first contributed, he did not spend excessive pains 
on his articles. "The Critical is so miserably bad," 
he says in one of his moments of severity, "that 
indolently as I write myself, I am almost ashamed 
to be in such company." ^ Even extreme editorial 
liberties did not ruflfle his indifference. What he 
prided himself on was absolute honesty, a humane 
temper, and generous appreciation of new talent in 
however humble a degree. Humane censure and 
generous appreciation are two qualities which often 
help to distinguish his reviews from a colorless mass, 
in the Critical Review and elsewhere. This periodical 
contains from Southey's pen not only the review, 
celebrated for its uniqueness, of Landor's "Gebir," 
but also overflowing appreciations of Robert Bloom- 
field and Joanna BailHe, besides many kind notices 
of poets who never emerged into fame. 

^ Robberds, Memoir of William Taylor, I, 300. 



28 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

Though he apparently took so little pride in his 
work for the Critical, Southey did not abandon it 
till he found another outlet in the Annual Review, 
estabhshed by Arthur Aikin in 1802. In this jour- 
nal WilHam Taylor was his chief coadjutor, all the 
other writers, according to Southey, being below 
contempt.^ But while the usual disparaging refer- 
ences are not wanting, there is also evidence that he 
was beginning to find more satisfaction in his task. 
He occasionally singled out an article of particular 
excellence for the attention of his correspondents, 
and he urged Grosvenor Bedford to get the Annual 
Reviews "because without them my operas are very 
incomplete," and because they contain ''more of the 
tone and temper of my mind than you can otherwise 
get at." ^ Both the scope of the reviews and their 
characteristic virtues are comprised in the statement 
which he made when about to join the ranks of the 
Quarterly: "I beheve myself to be a good reviewer 
in my own way, which is that of giving a succinct 
account of the contents of the book before me, ex- 
tracting its essence, bringing my own knowledge 
to bear upon the subject, and, where occasion serves, 
seasoning it with those opinions which in some degree 
leaven all my thoughts, words and actions. . . . 
Voyages and travels I review better than anything 
else, being well read in that branch of literature ; 
better, indeed, than most men. Biography and 
history are within my reach." ^ There is curiously 
no mention in this passage of literary criticism, 
though the Annual Review contains the most judicious 
Uterary reviews that Southey ever wrote, notably 
on the 1802 volume of Landor's poems, on Godwin's 
Chaucer, Hayley's Cowper, and Ritson's Romances. 

1 Life, III, 127. 2 Ibid., Ill, 42. » Ibid., Ill, 183. 



REVIEWING AND CRITICISM 29 

The discursive length of his articles was sometimes 
complained of, but to this Southey paid no heed. 

Southey's reputation for learning and ability had 
gained him an invitation to write for the Edinburgh 
Review, and in spite of his detestation of the prin- 
ciples and the spirit with which that organ was con- 
ducted he was on the point of accepting when it 
seemed that it was going to pass into the hands of 
his own pubKsher, Longman. But the change of 
ownership did not come about, so Southey preserved 
his self-respect and waited for the launching of the 
rival journal by the government. At the close of 
his Hfe he flattered himself that it was his refusal to 
join the Edinburgh that indirectly laid the founda- 
tion for the Quarterly Review} But the surroundings 
even of the Quarterly Review were not altogether 
congenial. Southey at first felt a httle uncomfortable 
at finding himself in the company of Gifford and 
Ellis, whose butt he had been in the early Anti- Ja- 
cobin days. He did not approve all the policies of the 
government which was supporting the periodical and 
he entertained fears and suspicions as to the freedom 
of the Review from ministerial control. Yet he hoped 
that this disadvantage would be offset by his own 
reputation for free and fearless thinking : the editor 
would doubtless understand his own interest and 
allow him unrestricted utterance of his views and 
principles.^ What Southey particularly rejoiced in, 
however, was the prospect of crossing foils on equal 
terms with the writers of the Edinburgh. He de- 
lighted to show his superiority over Sidney Smith 
on the subject of Hindoo Missions ^ and to see the 
effect which his own articles produced on the Bristol 

^ Warter, IV, 510- ^ Life, III, 198. 

' Warter, II, 145 ; Life, III, 234. 



30 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

Church of England Tract Society.^ As his sense of 
power grew he resolved to attack the enemy by tak- 
ing up " those very subjects which he has handled the 
most unfairly, and so to treat them as to force a com- 
parison which must end in our favor." ^ So he would 
not only shake the credit of their organ but pay off 
some of his numerous personal obhgations to the 
Edinburgh Review. (It was the mistaken policy of 
the Quarterly Review in general to flatter its rival by 
indiscriminately taking the opposite side of any 
opinion advanced in the Edinburgh) The credit 
and repute which Southey gained in the early years 
of this connection were, in fact, so considerable that 
he was commonly suspected of a much greater share 
in the counsels of the Review than he really enjoyed. 
Articles and opinions were frequently attributed to 
him with which he was wholly out of sympathy. 
To him was credited a very large, if not the largest 
share of the early success and permanent reputation 
of the periodical. 

To be sure, he also came in for a large measure 
of censure. He undertook to write on such a large 
range of subjects that his knowledge of them could 
not be thorough. His erudition in most matters 
was notable for its width rather than its exactness. 
His ignorance of practical poHtics and economics 
has already been noticed, but it may be illustrated 
once more by his views on America, which, kindly 
meant though they were, provoked laughter by their 
naive innocence. The road to the salvation of the 
United States, he thought, lay in a national debt, 
a hereditary nobihty, and an established church : he 
forgot to include a Poet Laureate, was the caustic 
observation of an American critic. Ineptitude Hke 
1 Warter, II, 248-9. 2 nj^^ m^ 316. 



REVIEWING AND CRITICISM 31 

this on important subjects was sure to attract un- 
flattering notice. In matters of less import his 
competence was also frequently questioned. In 
knowledge of natural history, which he had to make 
use of in reviews of travels, he stood condemned. His 
literary criticism achieved the incongruous combina- 
tion of perversity with tameness resulting from an 
excessive benevolence exercising itself upon insipid 
subjects. Censorious persons also complained that 
he emptied his note-books into his articles with httle 
provocation. This is the unfavorable side of the 
picture. 

The inner history of his connection with the Quar- 
terly Review is also a checkered one. The troubles 
of Southey with Gifford and Murray form an inter- 
esting episode in his own life and throw a valuable 
side-Hght on the relation between managers and 
authors. In the beginning Southey is quite compla- 
cent. Of course absolute authority with respect 
to any alteration must always be vested in the edi- 
tor.^ He even expresses an amused appreciation of 
the skill mth which Gifford emasculates an article.^ 
Before many years, however, the amusement gives 
way to irritation and anger as the writer sees his 
logical arrangements dislocated, his happy phrases 
garbled, editorial opinions inserted in awkward 
contradiction of his own in other parts of the same 
paper.^ On one occasion he finds in the proofs an 
interpolation, erroneous as to facts, made at the sug- 
gestion of no less a personage than the Duke of Well- 
ington. With becoming dignity he insists on the 
substitution of the original statement, but when the 
Review arrives, behold ! there is another interpolation, 

1 Ibid., Ill, 221. 2 Ibid., Ill, 226. 

Ubid., IV, 58; Warier, II, 393-5. 



32 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

contrary to his own expressed opinion, in a part of 
the article which he had not seen in proof.^ He pro- 
tests stoutly and is paid with soothing words and 
promises of amendment. These promises, of course, 
are repeated just as frequently as they are broken, 
and it is not till 182 1 that a paper of his, the Life 
of Cromwell, appears practically without mutila- 
tion — the only instance of the kind which Southey 
has recorded. Sometimes there is even an attempt 
to suggest to him what opinion on a given subject 
would be pleasing to the powers, but such approaches 
are sure to meet with an indignant rebuff.^ His 
strongest expressions of opinion, his best practical 
suggestions are weakened, he thinks, out of "pity to 
the Terrors of Ministers." ^ Indeed Southey finds 
himself between two fires. Gifford complains that 
he is too hberal while Murray thinks him too bigoted.^ 
But he will not accommodate himself to the fancies 
of either. Murray in general becomes an occasion of 
greater bitterness than his editor. To be sure he 
pays liberally, but he is correspondingly exacting. 
When he sends a particularly generous sum he inti- 
mates that such prices can be paid only for articles 
that produce a "decided impression" and even pre- 
sumes to offer hints on the tone of future reviews. 
Southey only deigns to reply that he might be spend- 
ing his time far more worthily and, from an elevated 
point of view, more profitably than by writing for 
the Quarterly at the highest prices.^ Whatever 
might happen to his essays after they left his hands, 
it never occurred to him to submit to the dictation 
of conditions from any source, and he proves his 
independence by deliberately refusing a request from 

1 Warter, III, 4-6. ^ Ibid., Ill, 34. » /j^_^ m^ 62. 

« Ibid., Ill, 417. ^ Ibid., Ill, 103. 



REVIEWING AND CRITICISM 33 

Murray for an article on the times. ^ If Murray 
attempts to express his dissatisfaction or resentment 
by a reduction of pay, he is courteously but promptly 
recalled to a sense of his meanness and of his obli- 
gations to literature.^ Southey found an additional 
grievance in the publisher's relations with Byron. 
Not satisfied with standing sponsor for the unspeak- 
able ''Don Juan," Murray had declined to open the 
pages of his Review for a wholesome chastisement 
of the pernicious vices of that fiend incarnate, and 
further aggravated his offence by printing a laudatory 
account of the blasphemous "Cain"!^ Such con- 
duct must disgust and alienate his best disposed 
supporters. Southey is quite willing to consider a 
proposal to establish a new review which shall shake 
the foundations of the Quarterly as the latter had 
once shaken that of the Edinburgh. In spite of the 
sacrifice of great undertakings that it would involve 
and in spite of his consciousness of not being qualified 
for managing anything, he is almost ready to assmne 
the editorship. At any rate he is deterred by no scru- 
ples of consideration for Murray. 

Compared with his feelings for the publisher at 
this time, his tone toward Gifford assumes great 
kindhness. Amidst his annoyance and irritation he 
had always expressed a warm personal regard for 
that greatly abused editor, but now Gifford was ail- 
ing and there was a prospect of his early retirement. 
With no uncharitable thought in his mind, Southey 
looked forward to a change in the management, with 
the hope that the new editor would consult his opin- 
ions and treat his articles with greater deference. 
He was a Kttle surprised and immensely gratified 
when his own candidate, John Coleridge, was ap- 

1 lUd., Ill, 159. 2 Ibid., Ill, 168. 3 jm^ iii^ 335-48. 

D 



34 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

pointed to succeed Gifford. But his gratification 
was short-lived, for in the course of a year Coleridge 
was himself superseded by John Gibson Lockhart, 
and Southey's complaints began anew. He had 
been prejudiced against Lockhart by what he had 
heard of his exuberant activities in Blackwood's 
Magazine, but even when he found that personally 
the new editor was worthy of his regard, he could 
not accommodate himself to his poHcies. Lock- 
hart, according to Southey's standards, did not have 
enough "root" in his principles and was too suscep- 
tible to revolutionary ideas — a dangerous weakness 
for the head of a government organ. The sad truth 
was that the new generation had arrived at power 
and Southey's influence had waned. His pen was 
still useful to the Quarterly on such subjects as the 
Catholic question and the Corn Laws, as well as on 
miscellaneous topics, and Southey still needed the 
revenue ; therefore the frequent disturbances ter- 
minated in some sort of understanding. The last 
reference that occurs in Southey's letters to his rela- 
tions with the Quarterly is of an affront. "The story 
is not worth telling," he says pathetically; "it was 
a piece of disrespectful ill-usage which I resent not 
upon either Lockhart or Murray, but upon the 
Review personified." ^ 

Southey's literary reviews call for some special 
comment in spite of what has already been observed 
about their weakness. On a close examination this 
weakness is seen to be chiefly the effect of a systematic 
policy which raises an interesting question of ethics. 
Does the reviewer owe a greater duty to the author 
or to the reading pubhc ? Southey decided the ques- 
tion in favor of the author; he thought the public 

1 Warter, IV, 408. 



REVIEWING AND CRITICISM 35 

would take no harm even if it were deceived into 
buying an innocuous and worthless volume. He 
used to account for his own taciturnity as induced 
by the dread of Coleridge's loquacity ; by the same 
token his critical insipidity was probably a reaction 
against the pungency of Jeffrey, from which he had 
personally suffered. Its contrast with the prevail- 
ing tone is its most interesting feature. In this 
particular Scott alone resembled him. It can be 
demonstrated as easily as the sum of two and two 
that his benevolence prevented Southey from exer- 
cising whatever share of the critical faculty he en- 
joyed. 

His first critical, perhaps it is better to say anti- 
critical, principle was that "goodness is a better 
thing than genius." ^ It followed that every display 
of fiHal or fraternal piety, of religious sentiment or 
devotion to duty, was more deserving of encourage- 
ment than any amount of originality or power or 
brilhancy in which the former qualities were incon- 
spicuous. As he could not endure the idea of giving 
pain and was aware of what reviewing phrases went 
for, he made it his aim to deal out such milk-and- 
water praise as would do no harm, "to speak of 
smooth versification, and moral tendency, etc., etc." ^ 
In the Critical Review he bestowed free praise on 
Robert Bloomfield's "Rural Tales," ^ but privately 
to Coleridge he wrote, "I have reviewed his Poems 
with the express object of serving him ; because if 
his fame keeps up to another volume, he will have 
made money enough to support him comfortably in the 
country ; but in a work of criticism how could you 
bring him to the touchstone?"'* To Montgomery's 

1 Life, III, 67. 2 Ibid., II, 198. 

* Second Series, xxxv, 67. * Life, II, 190. 



36 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

poems he applied the most extravagant epithets of 
appreciation and, because they overflowed with pure 
and pious feelings and had already been severely 
handled in the Edinburgh Review, he managed to 
conceal his real disappointment over them.^ He 
knew that Hayley's "Memoirs" was "a poor, in- 
sipid book" ^ and that his poetry was forever dead, 
but was not Hayley "a gentleman and a scholar, 
and a most kind-hearted and generous man?" 
Moreover he remembered with gratitude that it was 
to Hayley he owed his first introduction to Spanish 
literature and he therefore felt it a duty to review 
his work with respect and kindness.^ And so he 
constantly wreaked himself on subjects unworthy 
of a serious critic, on the "dihgent talents, early 
acquirements, and domestic happiness" of Barre 
Charles Roberts,'* on the piety of Lucretia Davidson, 
an American girl who wrote some verses and died 
before she was seventeen,^ or on the happier fate of 
the English servant-girl, Mary ColKng, who leads 
him into an excursus on uneducated poets in general.^ 
If Southey could have had his way, he would have 
reduced all the criticism in the Quarterly to his own 
innocuous standard. He lamented its tendency to 
imitate the tone and temper of the Edinburgh criti- 
cism; he was so disgusted with a certain review of 
Lady Morgan that he exclaimed, "I would rather 
have cut off my right hand than have written any- 
thing so unmanly and so disgraceful ! " ^ Even when 
there were faults to be reprehended he would have 
adopted a conciliatory manner and by giving free 
praise have led the straying gently into the right 

1 Quarterly Review, vi, 405 ; Life, IV, 33. ^ Warter, III, 427. 

3 Life, V, 179. * Quarterly Review, xii, 509. ^ Ibid., xli, 289. 
6 Ibid., xlvii, 80. ^ Warter, III, 79- 



REVIEWING AND CRITICISM 37 

path. "Keats," he says, "might have been won 
in that manner, and perhaps have been saved. So I 
have been assured." ^ It was no wonder that he 
early gained the reputation of being a sort of disin- 
terested press-agent. To his lot, he complained, 
generally fell the worthless poems of some good- 
natured person whom he knew,^ and in time applica- 
tions for his services from strangers became so fre- 
quent that, in order to avoid giving offence to any 
one, he resolved not to review the work of any living 
poet.^ In all his labors of love he only once succeeded 
in leaving a permanent impression on the public, and 
that was in editing, with a prefatory Life, the Re- 
mains of Kirke White. His verdict on this poet, 
however generous, has in some measure been approved 
by posterity. 

Whether there were really latent in Southey critical 
powers which were stifled by his goodness of heart, 
it is not possible to decide. He sometimes delivered 
himself with force and insight, as in some casual 
remarks on Landor's earlier poetry: "He is strong, 
but it is an unwieldy strength. Verse painting is 
his talent ; he makes me see, but he never makes me 
feel ; and he is always trying to make me think, and 
often makes shallow water look deep by muddying 
it." * But such utterances are rare and occur chiefly 
among the scattered sentences of his Commonplace 
Books. Against them can be cited frequent critical 
errors, such as the extravagance (which he shared 
with Scott) of associating Joanna Baillie with Shake- 
speare,^ to say nothing of his delusion concerning his 
own poetry. He appeared at his best in purely anti- 

^ Life, V, 203. 2 II, 197. 

3 Life, VI, 193. ^ Atlantic Monthly, Ixxxix, 40. 

^ Critical Review, 2d Series, xxxvii, 200-2 1 2. 



38 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

quarian criticism — in his scholarly review of Rit- 
son's Romances ^ or in the contribution of hints and 
facts in the manner of the rising school of historical 
criticism. In his reviews of Hayley and of Dr. Say- 
ers he wove in much of his abundant information on 
the obscurer phases of literature. He was looked 
upon as the proper person to take up the history of 
EngHsh poetry where Warton had left off, but the 
continuation for which he accepted terms from the 
publishers remained among his unexecuted projects. 
There is reason to suppose that if he had carried it 
out it would have contained much curious matter 
but undistinguished. He professed a disincHnation 
to ambitious subjects: "Shakespeare and Milton I 
leave to be written about by young men who wish to 
display themselves."^ In his treatment the great 
objects would have been blotted out by a multitude 
of specks. That his history would have been sea- 
soned with independence and with more than a grain 
of perversity may be gathered from the defence of 
Flecknoe against the satire of Dryden which appears 
in his "Omniana." ^ But it would have suffered from 
the same lack of a philosophic principle which weak- 
ened all of his greater works and would hardly have 
attained the authority of his forerunner. The sum 
of Southey's criticism would have to be called neg- 
Ugible, if it were not for his contribution to the knowl- 
edge of Spanish hterature. 

^ Annual Review, ii, 515. ^ Warier, IV, 93. ' No. 62. 



SPANISH LITERATURE 

With his first tour of Portugal and Spain in 1795 
began Southey's interest in the affairs of the Penin- 
sula which was to give rise to his most ambitious 
undertakings in prose. Its immediate literary result 
was the volume of "Letters Written during a Resi- 
dence in Spain and Portugal" concerning which 
Southey's excuse that "they were only pubHshed 
from necessity"^ may be accepted as sufficient. 
One striking piece of wisdom Southey did bring back. 
He was so sickened at the intolerance to which he 
was everywhere a witness, at the refusal of sectaries 
to see that "opposite opinions may exist without 
affecting moral character" that he resolved never to 
judge of Man by his principles. ^ Had this resolve 
but taken firm root in his mind, what a deal of re- 
crimination he would have been spared ! It was on 
his second visit (i 800-1 801) that he began storing 
up materials for a monumental history of the country 
which was already projected in his mind. 

But though the historian in Southey was at this 
period already becoming prominent, his creative 
energies were still chiefly absorbed in poetry. It 
was natural, therefore, that his first serious scholarly 
work should reflect this interest and that the poetic 
material of the Peninsula should be the first to receive 
his attention. He made Enghsh versions of some of 
the most famous Spanish romances and so transformed 
them as to give them almost the rank of independent 

^ Warier, I, 42. ^ Letters Written in Portugal. 

39 



40 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

creations. "Amadis of Gaul" is reduced in his treat- 
ment to half its bulk by the elimination of repeti- 
tions, prolixities, and digressions. The abridgment is 
done with taste and Hterary feehng, but it is the 
taste and Hterary feeling of a pure-minded English- 
man of the nineteenth century. Southey's object 
was to give a faithful representation of the manners 
and morality of chivalry, but his version is absolutely 
faithful only in externals. The description of a 
knight's apparel, the details of a tournament, and 
matters pertaining to war in general are more faith- 
fully reproduced than the passions and feehngs of 
the actors. Southey's scrupulous morahty balks at 
the mediaeval conventions of love and tames many 
a scene of passionate ardor to the sober level of his 
own restraint. Along with a good deal of its coarse- 
ness the old romance thereby loses its sensuous 
warmth and its unsophisticated honesty of tone. 
But in spite of this loss it is well entitled to the praise 
that Ticknor gave it when he called it the only form 
of the story that can be read in Enghsh. 

The "Chronicle of the Cid" deserves more un- 
qualified applause. Southey here set himself the 
more difficult task of combining a variety of materials 
from ancient chronicle and later history, from epic 
and ballad, and of weaving them into a uniform tex- 
ture for the illustration of mediaeval manners and 
customs, as in the "Amadis." To this work he 
apphed himself with a superior zest. The "Amadis" 
had interested him comparatively little. The favor- 
able reception which it had everywhere been ac- 
corded, compared with the critical coldness toward 
"Thalaba," had even nettled him. The readiness of 
people to praise it he attributed to the modest pre- 
tension of the work, which was too humble to excite 



SPANISH LITERATURE 41 

any person's envy, whereas the grandeur of "Thai- 
aba" aroused the jealousy of the literary tribe. 
"Praise and fame," he remarked in this connection, 
"are two very distinct things. Nobody thinks the 
higher of me for that translation, or feels a wish to 
see me for it, as they do for 'Joan of Arc' and 'Thai- 
aba. '"^ But of "The Cid" he speaks as a very 
favorite work.^ He is impressed with the poetic 
quality of the material — romance has nothing finer 
than the proceedings of the Cortes at Zamora, poetry 
nothing superior to its hving pictures.^ He feels 
that his translation improves so much on the original 
as to be unique in its kind.* The language, too, in 
itself poetical, becomes more poetical by necessary 
compression. The Spaniards will be pleased at the 
fame that their Campeador is beginning to enjoy in 
England, and Coleridge is perfectly delighted with 
the work.^ This enthusiasm needs to be discounted 
a little. Some of the earlier portions of Southey's 
narrative have too little to do with the exploits of 
the Cid, and the miraculous events following the 
Cid's death, derived from late legends, are not in 
harmony with the fresh realism of the main narrative. 
Instead of reproducing the Kfe of a given age, Southey 
has mixed up modes of thinking and feeHng appropri- 
ate to diverse periods. The style, too, occasionally 
displays its joints. One is often able to recognize 
where the more exalted tone of the poetic source 
interrupts the sober historical flow. But these im- 
perfections, though they detract somewhat from its 
value as a finished work of art, weigh slightly in the 
balance against the intrinsic interest of the materials, 
the general skill of the composition, and the graceful 

* Life, II, 359. 2 Warter, I, 382. 3 Life, III, 127. 

* Ibid., Ill, 166. s Ibid,, III, 171. 



42 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

simplicity of the style. For the translation of all 
these old romances Southey had adopted the manner 
of Malory and the sixteenth century chroniclers. 
He imitated their artless syntax which, while it lacks 
a sense of the period, is capable, in its sensitiveness 
to the harmony of the phrase or comma, of the most 
characteristic cadences of English prose. Euphony 
is the quality of this kind of prose at its best, and 
euphony is the one quality, after simplicity, which 
Southey always aimed at in his prose. This syntax, 
purified of its disorder, combined with the old vo- 
cabulary of chivalry to produce that tone of archaic 
quaintness which charms all readers of Southey's 
translations. 

This was pioneering work, yet the century that has 
elapsed has not superseded it. On the more purely 
scholarly side also Southey's achievements were, for 
a pioneer, considerable and to a certain extent even 
of permanent value. Critics writing at large have 
often condemned his scholarship as loose and un- 
methodical when judged by modern standards. An 
appraisal of this phase of his work must depend on 
the judgment of experts, and it is gratifying to find 
a methodical German investigator pronouncing a 
favorable verdict on Southey's knowledge of Span- 
ish.^ His understanding of the problems connected 
with "The Cid" is not quite on a level with that of 
his contemporaries on the continent, but in his dis- 
cussion of "Amadis of Gaul" and "Palmerin of 
England" — (Southey had revised and half retrans- 
lated the existing EngHsh version of the latter ro- 
mance by Anthony Monday) — he stands distinctly 

* Ludwig Pfandl, "Robert Southey und Spanien": Revue His- 
panique, xxviii, 1-315. The statements that follow lean on the 
authority of this detailed monograph. 



SPANISH LITERATURE 43 

superior. In tracing the authorship of "Palmerin 
of England" he made a contribution which, though 
assailed by succeeding critics, has now been firmly- 
reestablished. In addition Southey contributed an 
article on Portuguese literature to one of the early 
numbers of the Quarterly Review which was immedi- 
ately translated into Portuguese and served Ticknor 
as a compendious outline for his more detailed study.^ 
Ticknor again expressed his obKgation to a Quarterly 
article of Southey's when he wrote his chapter on 
Lope de Vega. He was therefore paying no lip- 
homage when he declared that "Mr. Southey's name 
is one that must always be mentioned with pecuHar 
respect by scholars interested in Spanish hterature." ^ 

^ Ticknor, History of Spanish Literature, II, 163 n. 
^ Ibid., I, 13 n. 



HISTORY 

The important work to which Southey repeatedly 
makes allusion when complaining of the time wasted 
on reviews is the writing of history. Of the genuine- 
ness of his calling for this work he felt even more 
secure, if that is possible, than of his poetic inspiration. 
When the poetic fire began to wane, he clung to his- 
tory as his sure hold on immortahty. Poets there 
had been before him, but no one had yet combined 
the exacting requisites of the historian in anything 
like the measure possessed by himself. "Industry, 
judgment, genius ; the patience to investigate, the 
discrimination to select, the power to infer and 
to enliven" ^ — by the aid of these qualities he would 
give an example of how history should be written 
such as "the world had never yet seen." Southey 
also set a just value on " a power of intellectual trans- 
migration with which few persons are gifted." His 
ideas on this point are quite modern and permanently 
valuable. "The author," he says, "if he would deal 
justly toward those whose actions he professes to 
record, should go back to their times, and, standing 
where they stood, endeavor, as far as is possible, to 
see things as they appeared within their scope of 
vision, in the same light, and from the same point 
of view, and through the same medium." ^ This 
virtue on which he prided himself was not, however, 
an ideal of objective detachment. It was modified 
— Southey would say strengthened — by his strict 
religious principles. In this respect he felt a towering 
^ Life, II, 242. ^ Quarterly Review, x, 91, 

44 



HISTORY 45 

superiority over infidel historians like Hume and 
Gibbon. He cordially despised "that miserable 
state of Pyrrhonism which in these days assumes 
the name of HberaHty" and which would regard de- 
votion to a special set of rehgious dogmas as a nar- 
rowing factor. On the contrary, "the more re- 
ligious a historian is, the more impartial will be his 
statements, the more charitable his disposition, the 
more comprehensive his views, the more enhghtened 
his philosophy. In rehgion alone is true philosophy 
to be found ; the philosophy which contemplates 
man in all his relations, and in his whole nature; 
which is founded upon a knowledge of that nature, 
and which is derived from Him who is the Beginning 
and the End." ^ 

Among other pathetic ironies of Southey's life it 
is not the least that the great opus in which all the 
characteristic excellences of the historian were to be 
supremely exempHfied was never accomplished, and 
its fragments have never seen the Hght. Circum- 
stances had fixed his attention on Portugal, where 
he thought he saw a vast undeveloped theme. An 
ambitious plan had entered his head in 1799 and 
thenceforth to the very day of his sad collapse the 
subject was uppermost in his mind. The scale of 
the project is most imposing : it was to be in ten or 
twelve quarto volumes and to include not only the 
history of European Portugal, but the story of the 
Portuguese in Asia and South America, of the Jesuits 
in Japan, the literary history of Spain and Portugal, 
and a history of the Monastic Orders.^ The subject, 
he feels, is worthy o.f all the pains that can be bestowed 
on it. The annals of Portugal are "fertile beyond all 
others in circumstances of splendid and tragic story." ^ 

^ Ibid., xxxvii, 197. ^ Life, II, 305. ^ Peninsular War, I, 107. 



46 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

The more he dwells on it, the more its grandeur ex- 
pands : ''No history has ever yet been composed 
that presents such a continuous interest of one kind 
or another, as this would do, if I should live to complete 
it. The chivalrous portion is of the very highest 
beauty; much of what succeeds has a deep tragic 
interest ; and then comes the gradual destruction of 
a noble national character brought on by the cancer 
of Romish superstition." ^ The mass of folios that 
needs to be digested might terrify an ordinary stu- 
dent, but Southey attacks them with eagerness and 
zest, in order to give an added lustre to his fame by 
producing something unsurpassed for thorough re- 
search and range of materials.^ The interest of the 
narrative is to be heightened by the novelty of in- 
troducing the manners of the age and people.^ The 
style is to be plain, compressed, unornamented, 
uniting strength with perspicuity.'^ In short, it is 
to be "one of the most curious books of its kind that 
has ever yet appeared" ^ and will of itself justify him 
in having chosen literature for his life's pursuit.® 
It may, if it have but half the success of Gibbon, 
yield important profit, but it cannot fail to bring him 
enduring fame.^ He can hardly restrain his impatience 
to see it in print. "The day when I receive the 
first proof-sheet will be one of the happiest of my 
life." ^ About no other work does Southey speak 
with such warmth of feeling. Long interruptions 
do not avail to abate his enthusiasm. Amid all 
the distractions of more pressing demands the thought 
of it steals in to stimulate and encourage. "Just 
now I am taking a treat at my great history," he writes 

1 Life, VI, 192. 2 Ibid., IV, iii. ^ Warter, I, 99. 

* Ibid., I, 145. 5 Life, IV, 9. ^ Warter, I, 337. 

^ Ibid., I, 145. 8 Life, II, 341. 



HISTORY 47 

in 1815.^ Age comes on and brings with it a mel- 
ancholy concern lest the completion of the work be 
too long delayed,^ but still there is no flagging of 
purpose. It is always the work which he has most 
at heart, always the next to go to press, — for the 
material is two-thirds or three-fourths digested and 
it is only a matter of recomposing in the process of 
transcribing what has long since been written.^ 
And just as the shades are about to envelop him he 
is in good heart and hope, "never in better mood 
for setting about what has been for so many years 
among the main objects which I have had in view." * 
This dream of forty years must be recorded as a 
dream.^ 

What Southey's History of Portugal would have 
been like, it is unfair to judge by his History of 
Brazil, the only section of the great plan that was 
ever carried out. He was led to take this up first not 
on account of any superior attraction in the subject, 
but because of the great poHtical interest in South 
American affairs. Napoleon had just seized Spain, 
and the fear of the British was that he would get 
control of the American colonies. Apparently Gren- 
ville, who was then in the Cabinet and who knew 
Southey as the school-friend of his nephew, Charles 
Wynn, urged him to take advantage of the popular 
curiosity and get immediately to work on Brazil. But 
it is clear that Southey was not deceived as to the 
intrinsic interest of the materials. ''Bare and 

^ Warter, II, 399. 2 /jfj_^ iv, 220. 

3 Life, VI, 74, 158, i9i,_ 270. * Warter, IV, 573, 575. 

^ An episode of the History appeared in the Edinburgh Annual 
Register for 1810 (Vol. 3, Part 2, pp. i-li) with the title "History of 
Lope de Aguirre," and was e.xpanded into a small book, The Expedi- 
tion of Orsita and the Crimes of Aguirre (1821). It is an admirable 
piece of narrative. 



48 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

insipid" is how he characterizes them, and he adds 
with a sigh that there is no making a silk purse out 
of a sow's ear.^ He is sure that the pubHc will be 
disappointed, fancying that a fine country must have 
a fine history, and he is quite resigned to its unpopu- 
larity.- Not that the book will be without distinc- 
tive merits. It will bring together a great mass of 
information, a great deal which will be interesting 
as a book of travels, a greater body of facts respecting 
savage life than can be found in any other single 
work, "and what has never yet been given, a per- 
fectly fair account of the Jesuits in Paraguay."^ 
The result, he knows, is such "that there does not 
exist, in this or in any other language, so full an 
account of any country from the earliest times, of 
its rise, progress, geography, the manners of its abo- 
rigines, and its actual state at the point of time when 
the writer concludes, as I shall have prepared of 
Brazil." ^ These claims, considerable as they are, 
are not exorbitant. In moments of exaltation fol- 
lowing the completion of his ten years' labor, Southey 
unfortunately made some other claims, which have 
been more generally remembered, in the somewhat 
grandiloquent peroration appended to his History 
and in a letter to Chauncey Townshend proclaiming 
that "ages hence it will be found among those works 
which are not destined to perish, and secure for me 
a remembrance in other countries as well as in my 
own ; that it will be read in the heart of South Amer- 
ica, and communicate to the Brazilians, when they 
shall have become a powerful nation, much of their 
own history which would otherwise have perished, 

^ Warter, II, 98. 

2 Ibid., II, 193 ; History of Brazil, last paragraph ; Life, IV, 353. 

' Warter, II, 193. * Ibid., Ill, 130. 



HISTORY 49 

and be to them what the work of Herodotus is to 
Europe." ^ 

Southey's account has all the virtues of an agree- 
ably written source book, not the least of these vir- 
tues being its comparative freedom from partisan 
prejudices. He does often obtrude his theological 
convictions on the innocent savages, but in the form 
of tags and scarcely in a way to vitiate the narrative. 
Speaking, for example, of the extinction of certain 
South American tribes, he is provoked to generalize 
as follows: "Thus it is with savages; through sin 
they have originally lapsed into the savage state ; 
and they who reject civilization when it is placed 
within their reach, if they escape from other agents 
of destruction, perish by the devices of their own 
heart, to which they are abandoned." ^ The fulness 
of the history may damage it as a book of entertain- 
ment but must be of service to the special student, 
and its accuracy has not been impeached. The 
minuteness with which Southey treats all the skir- 
mishes between settlers and natives or the brawls be- 
tween Portuguese and Hollanders, as if they involved 
momentous decisions, is indeed tedious, but there 
are sometimes passages of animated narrative such 
as the summary of Hans Stade's adventures among 
the Tupinambas ^ or the reduction of the Nheengaibas 
by Vieyra,^ and descriptive accounts, even more 
interesting, of the customs of the Tupinambas ^ or 
Tapuyas ^ and of the communities established by 
the Jesuits in Paraguay.^ The style has the usual 
unobtrusive merits of Southey's prose, never arresting 
by flashes of brilhancy but rising adequate to the 

* Life, IV, 354. ^ III, 394. ^ /jj-j_^ j^ 191-220. 

*/iz(i., II, 519-526. * /6/c?., I, 248-261. ^ /6i£f., I, 399-404. 
' Ibid., II, 333-376. 



50 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

subject wherever a heightened interest demands it. 
It is worth observing that though the late Professor 
Lounsbury singled out the "History of Brazil" as a 
book which no one, presumably of his generation, 
had read,^ it was at one time unexpectedly over- 
praised in the Edinburgh Review, which spoke of its 
"glowing descriptions of the marvels of tropical 
nature,, the picturesque features of savage hfe, and 
chivalrous adventures of European settlers." ^ This, 
it should be remarked in all justice, was after South- 
ey's death. 

Southey's other large historical work was also an 
outcome of his interest in the affairs of Spain and 
Portugal, in this case strengthened by his staunch 
British patriotism. He was an eager witness to the 
awakening of the Iberian countries from their long 
lethargy and of their remarkable and unlooked for 
resistance to the usurpation of Napoleon. He has 
the credit of predicting that the Spanish adventure 
would prove the ruin of Napoleon. He glorified the 
struggle of Spain for its independence as one "of the 
same eternal and unfading interest as the wars of 
Greece agamst Xerxes,"^ a subject worthy of the 
pen of any historian. He really began to write the 
story of the Peninsular War while the conflict was 
in progress, that being the principal theme of the 
bulky historical sections which he contributed to 
the Edinburgh Annual Register. Here he not only 
presented the facts with the fulness of a work of 
reference, but freely criticised what he conceived to 
be the misconduct and incapacity of the ministry, 
and spoke his opinion impartially of all. He quoted 
with satisfaction a remark of Jeffrey's, made in 

^ Yale Review, Jan. 191 5. ^ xciii, 400. 

3 Peninsular War, III, 485 (ch. 23). 



HISTORY 51 

ignorance of Southey's authorship, that the first 
volume of the Register contained the best piece of 
contemporary history he had seen in twenty years.^ 
With the triumphant close of Wellesley's campaign, 
he began to think of putting his materials into a 
permanent form. When he apphed to the conquer- 
ing general for the use of his documents, that officer 
refused, apparently distrusting a layman's abiHty 
to treat miHtary matters intelligently. Southey sus- 
pected that what the duke really feared was that he 
would give too much credit to the Spaniards and fail 
to make the history a full-length portrait of himself.^ 
He deplored the duke's poor judgment but deter- 
mined to go on with the history nevertheless. "Let 
who will write his military history, it is in my 
book that posterity will read of his campaigns." ^ 
The world unfortunately judged otherwise. When 
Southey's work was two-thirds pubHshed, the au- 
thorized history of the war by Colonel Napier, 
himself a participant in the campaigns, began to 
appear, and the doom of the earlier book was 
sealed. 

Though it did not deserve to be sneered at as "a 
mere bookselling speculation, " ^ the shortcomings of 
Southey's book were exactly those which Wellington 
had anticipated, and they were brought into clear 
rehef by Napier's version of the same events. That 
the latter was a scientific and fair-minded account 
may be inferred from the censure which it met from 
Coleridge. "It is a specimen," he says, "of the true 
French military school : not a thought for the justice 
of the war — not a consideration of the damnable 
and damning iniquity of the French invasion. All 

^ Life, III, 319. 2 Correspondence with Caroline Bowles, 73. 

^ Ibid., 74. * Edinburgh Review, xlix, 392. 



52 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

is looked at as a mere game of exquisite skill, and the 
praise is regularly awarded to the most successful 
player. ... I declare I know no book more likely 
to undermine the national sense of right and wrong 
in matters of foreign interference than this work of 
Napier's." ^ The Quarterly Review devoted four un- 
usually long articles to the chastisement of Napier, 
largely for his partiality toward the French and his 
prejudice against the Spaniards.^ On none of these 
grounds could exception be taken to Southey. He 
guided his narrative by the very strictest principles 
of British morality, he could not be exceeded in his 
detestation and abhorrence of everything connected 
with the French, and he idealized the conduct of the 
Spaniards though it involved the disparagement of 
his own countrymen. But even when these preju- 
dices were viewed as virtues, they could not atone for 
an inadequate command of the facts and for a com- 
plete failure, of which miUtary men must be the 
judges, to understand the significance of an action 
or the purpose of a campaign.^ Much good writing 
this book, like all of Southey's books, was sure to 
contain. The story of the siege of Zaragoza is the 
most vivid piece of narrative that Southey ever com- 
posed, the writing of which made his pulse beat faster. 
It may be placed alongside the brilliant passages of 
the more picturesque historians of the nineteenth 
century, the masterpieces of Macaulay, of Motley, 
and of Parkman. 

More successful than his large undertakings were 
his two comparatively modest works on English 
history, the "Book of the Church" and the "Naval 
History of England." They were both conceived as 

* Table Talk, June 26, 1831. ^ \^^ j^i^ 437; Ivii, 492 ; Ixi, 51. 
^Quarterly Review, Ixxxviii, 241. 



HISTORY 53 

popular manuals and not as works of research. The 
former was intended for use in the schools of the 
Church Establishment and the latter as one of the 
numbers of Longman's Cabinet Cyclopedia. To be 
sure they both far exceeded the limits of the original 
plan. As usual, Southey could not altogether re- 
strain the "peri of his steed from expatiating on the 
plain of prolixity,"^ but on the whole there is no great 
amount of encumbrance. They are thoroughly read- 
able books, bearing in their narrative vigor and 
fluency the closest resemblance to the "Life of Nel- 
son." In the "Book of the Church" the section 
recounting the quarrel between Becket and Henry 
II and the story of the martyrdoms from William 
Sautre to Archbishop Laud are carried along with 
an unflagging interest. The considerable number 
of editions which this book enjoyed is evidence of 
the attractiveness of its style, but it made no addi- 
tions to the existing knowledge of the subject and its 
interpretations of facts and persons were warped by 
Southey's High Church convictions. The "Naval 
History" ran into five i2mo volumes without at- 
taining completion and was perhaps on that account 
less popular, but its contents have a decidedly su- 
perior value. It is chiefly concerned with the seamen 
of Elizabeth's reign, and Southey's unequalled 
knowledge of the Spanish historians of that period 
was here of the greatest service. Not only did it 
afford him information generally inaccessible, but it 
provided him with a perspective by which the 
ideaHzed heroes of the Armada could be much more 
judiciously estimated. The actions of Drake and of 
Hawkins, of Essex and of Raleigh are recorded with 
a fidelity, impartiality, and sanity which fixes the 
1 Warter, III, 387. 



54 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

character of these worthies and divests them of the 
false glamour of romance which has gathered about 
them. The biographical sketches of which this 
History is composed have been frequently admired 
and some of them in recent years reprinted as speci- 
mens of "the finest portrait gallery of Elizabethan 
sea heroes in the English language." ^ Mr. David 
Hannay credits Southey with bringing to his studies 
of Elizabethan seamen a general knowledge that has 
never been equalled by any other English writer, 
with unerring tact in selecting his authorities and 
extraordinary dexterity in interweaving them. His 
account of the Armada, he says, is as full as it could 
be made on the evidence accessible to him, and but 
little remains to be added.^ Furthermore, it should 
be remembered to the credit of Southey's impartiahty 
that the story of the great British triumph is told 
without any bluster; there is not wanting even a 
word of respect and honor for the dignity of Philip's 
behavior when he received the news of the defeat of 
his armament and commanded thanks to be given, 
throughout Spain, to God and his saints that the 
defeat was no greater.^ 

Southey also planned a compendious history of 
England to correspond to the "Book of the Church" 
and a larger work on the reign of George III."* Had 
he written them they would undoubtedly have had 
the same virtues and the same defects as the "Book 
of the Church." His views on the course of EngUsh 
history stand out all too clearly in sundry articles in 
the Quarterly Review. In reviewing Hallam's "Con- 
stitutional History" he presents an interesting but 

^ English SeajJien, edited by David Hannay, London, 1895. 
2 Cf. Quarterly Review, clxxxi, 3. ' Naval History, II, 368. 

* Warier, III, 417. 



HISTORY 55 

now unfamiliar interpretation of the Great Rebellion. 
The financial difficulties of Charles the First's reign 
he explains as the fault of Parliament and not of the 
king. "The intolerance and persecution were not 
on the side of the laws and the establishment, but of 
the puritans ; there was no design of subverting the 
liberties of the nation, but there was a settled pur- 
pose of overthrowing the church and the monarchy; 
the king appealed to the laws, and his opponents to 
the prejudices, the passions, and the physical force of 
the people." ^ Strafford was a patriot. Laud a saint, 
Charles a martyr. Hampden and Pym were dis- 
appointed place-seekers and unprincipled demagogues, 
Cromwell a man of many virtues who sacrificed to 
earthly greatness his peace of mind and hope of 
heavenly reward.^ In another article Southey has 
left the equally remarkable clue which would have 
guided him in writing of the "Age of George III": 
"The age of the Antonines was the happiest of which 
any remembrance has been preserved in ancient 
history; that of the Georges has been the happiest 
in later times ; altogether so in our own country, 
and, during the greater part of its continuance, 
throughout the whole of the European states. We 
have seen the termination of that age — not of the 
dynasty with which it began, nor (let us trust in 
God's mercy !) of those blessings which, through the 
accession of that dynasty, were preserved for our 
forefathers, and for us — and for our children, unless, 
by any laches on our part, we suffer their inheritance 
to be cut off." ^ All that the world has lost in these 
unwritten books is possibly another review by 
Macaulay. Southey was most successful when he 

^ Quarterly Review, xxxvii, 238. ^ Ibid., xxv, 279-347. 

' Ibid., xliv, 262. 



56 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

had no great principles to illustrate, no philosophic 
clue to guide him. That is why the "History of 
Brazil" and the "Naval History" are useful con- 
tributions to the subjects of which they treat and 
are the only residuum of many years of devoted 
toil. 



BIOGRAPHY 

In the kindred province of biography Southey's 
success was greater than in history. The largest 
part of the "Naval History," indeed, is cast in bio- 
graphical form and might more fittingly be Hsted 
among his achievements under the present head. 
His manner of treating his materials was both sym- 
pathetic and judicious. No fairer mode of approach 
can be imagined for a biographer than Southey's 
plan "to account for the actions of men by their own 
principles and represent them as the persons repre- 
sent them to themselves." ^ In this way justice is 
assured to the subject of the biography while there 
is nothing to prevent the author from expressing his 
individual judgment of the motives and actions 
which he has passed in review. There is always the 
danger that actions may be misunderstood and 
motives wrongly imputed, but with Southey's scrupu- 
lousness in the treatment of documents this danger 
was reduced to a minimum. Naturalness and spon- 
taneity are distinctive quahties of his biographies. 
The story seems to be telling itself, simply and un- 
pretentiously. The character is not deliberately and 
formally analyzed, but revealed step by step in his 
words and deeds. Whatever personal bias may 
exist is either inherent in the choice of the subject or 
lightly superposed, as in the moral reflections on the 
South American savages, but it is not allowed to 
permeate the narrative. 

^ Robberds, Memoir of William Taylor, II, 347. 
S7 



58 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

The ''Life of Nelson" is the single work of Southey 
which has won universal acclaim. Greeted with 
unanimous approval on its first appearance, it early 
gained the reputation of a Uterary classic and has to 
this day retained its unassailable eminence. Not 
that it is in the specialist's sense an authoritative 
life. Southey understood as little of naval strategy 
as he did of land manoeuvres — he walked among 
sea terms, he said, as carefully as a cat among crockery 
— and the technical history of Nelson's sea-battles 
was left for Admiral Mahan to describe. But the 
value of Southey's work was not thereby impaired. 
It is still the book to which the general reader will 
go for the story of the exploits of England's greatest 
hero told directly and simply, yet with a warmth 
of patriotic interest and a sincerity of admiration 
which are exactly suited to the occasion. This tri- 
umph of artistic prose Southey accomplished almost 
unintentionally. The task, he said, was an imposed 
one, quite out of his way, and his own share in it 
merely to arrange in clear and continuous form ma- 
terials " in themselves full of character, picturesque, 
and sublime." ^ Had he been allowed his own way, 
he would probably have approached the task in the 
same spirit as the Peninsular War and have produced 
an equally abortive result. He would have crammed 
his outline with a mass of uninteresting documents 
and intruded abundant digressions on naval and 
military matters in general. His materials, he is 
quoted as saying, would have extended to ten times 
the bulk.2 Fortunately both the size of the work 
and the time of completion were firmly fixed by 
Murray, and so he was saved from spoiling a master- 
piece. 

^ Life, IV, 9, 17. ^ Quarterly Review, Ixxxviii, 239. 



BIOGRAPHY 59 

The "Life of Wesley," which next to the "Nelson" 
— though at a long distance — was his most suc- 
cessful biography, is an example of Southey's tendency 
to inclusiveness. This book is more properly a 
history of the Methodist movement than a biography 
of its founder. The stories of George Whitefield and 
of the Moravians are introduced in great detail. 
Southey's design was to display the conditions which 
fostered the religious revival of the eighteenth cen- 
tury and he therefore drew on everything which 
was likely to illustrate it. He speaks of the pains 
which were required to collect the pieces for this 
"tesselated tablet," but the epithet does not give 
an impression of the skill with which the materials 
were blended. There is no patchwork ; the related 
subjects are not introduced in the form of digressions 
but fused into a continuous narrative with the main 
theme. Fully as much as on the score of composition 
the book is entitled to praise for its fair-mindedness. 
Of course it did not satisfy the Methodists, but it 
was also censured on the other side for devoting 
superfluous labor and attaching too much importance 
to a subject so trifling and contemptible. The criti- 
cism shows that Southey was rendering a useful 
service in making the ruling classes aware of the 
serious significance of the reHgious movement among 
the humble masses of England. 

In writing the "Life of Cowper" Southey was 
hampered by copyright restriction on many letters 
which were being utilized in a rival biography. He 
characteristically tried to make up the deficiency by 
introducing long chapters of literary history about 
Churchill and Colman and Bonnell Thornton. 

Southey also composed many brief biographical 
sketches in the shape of introductory essays or 



6o SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

Quarterly articles. To the former class belong the 
lives of Kirke White, John Bunyan, Dr. Watts, and 
the collection of "Lives of the Uneducated Poets." 
Of the Review biographies, the "Life of Cromwell" 
was later separately reprinted, but some of the others 
have a more curious interest. There is, to begin with, 
a very entertaining account of Wilham Huntington, 
S.S. (Sinner Saved), a fanatical preacher who, "when 
the unnamed part of his apparel was worn out, used 
to pray for a supply and receive a new pair, as he 
represented it, by the special interposition of Provi- 
dence." ^ There is also a charmingly written nar- 
rative of the life of Bayard, the Chevalier sans peur 
et sans reproche, in which Southey's early fondness 
for chivalry is reanimated and he indulges in that 
pleasant vein of archaic English which he had de- 
veloped in the "Amadis of Gaul" and "The Cid." ^ 
The sketch of Marlborough strikes one by its glori- 
fication of the duke's character, which approaches, 
according to Southey, "in all his relations, public 
and private, almost as nearly as human frailty will 
allow, to the model of a great patriot, a true states- 
man, and a consummate general." ^ Finally, in his 
account of John Evelyn, Southey embodied an ideal 
of old-fashioned beauty which he cherished in his 
heart of hearts and summed it up in the most beauti- 
ful and stately sentence he ever wrote: "For an 
English gentleman he is the perfect model. Neither 
to solicit public offices, nor to shun them, but when 
they are conferred to execute their duties diligently, 
conscientiously, and fearlessly; to have no amuse- 
ments but such as being laudable as well as innocent, 
are healthful alike for the mind and for the body, 

* Quarterly Review, xxiv, 462-510. ^ Ibid., xxxii, 355-397' 

' Ibid., xxiii, 1-73. 



BIOGRAPHY 6 1 

and in which, while the passing hour is beguiled, a 
store of delightful recollection is laid up ; to be the 
Hberal encourager of Hterature and the arts; to seek 
for true and permanent enjoyment by the practice 
of the household virtues — the only course by which 
it can be found ; to enlarge the sphere of existence 
backward by means of learning through all time, 
and forward by means of faith through all eternity, 
— behold the fair ideal of human happiness ! And 
this was reahzed in the hfe of Evelyn." ^ 

^ Ibid., xix, 54. 



MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 

SouTHEY produced three works of miscellaneous 
prose — the "Letters of Espriella," "Sir Thomas 
More : Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects 
of Society," and "The Doctor." In the j&rst of 
these he adopted the device, familiar in the eighteenth 
century, of criticising the manners and institutions 
of his own country from the point of view of a ficti- 
tious foreign visitor. The disguise was very unskil- 
fully preserved. In spite of his sympathy with 
Spain, it was impossible for Southey to free himself 
from his tight British skin. The discussions of poHti- 
cal and social conditions, of the manufacturing sys- 
tem, of the Quakers and Methodists, of the Sweden- 
borgians and the reigning religious quacks are con- 
ducted in his characteristically dogmatic vein. His 
admirable descriptions of the Lake Country, too, 
express the love of a native, and the style has the 
same quaKties and defects as in his other works. A 
very similar range of topics, with the same set of 
opinions, is to be found in the Colloquies, written 
about a score of years later. The dramatic device 
is not much happier than in "Espriella." One 
recognizes Southey's great interlocutor in his domes- 
tic virtues, his humanism, and perhaps even his 
humor, but one fails to get a ghmpse of the clear 
intellect, the bold vision, the far-seeing idealism of 
the author of "Utopia." There are, however, in 
this book many more pages of beautiful writing, the 

62 



MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 63 

fruit of a larger experience of life's hopes and sorrows. 
The favorite spots of his Lake country are once more 
described, but now a spirit of melancholy reminis- 
cence hovers over them. All the pleasures of his 
domestic and book-filled existence are subdued to a 
tone of poetic sadness with no touch of bitterness to 
detract from their ingratiating charm. His private 
confidences in his walks and in his hbrary still make 
dehghtful reading after his opinions on serious ques- 
tions have all passed away into obHvion. 

"The Doctor" is a work of altogether different 
pretensions and the greatest favorite with Southey. 
"Espriella" and the Colloquies were intended for 
the instruction of his contemporaries ; "The Doctor" 
was undertaken primarily to afford recreation from 
severer labors as well as to provide a receptacle for 
many odds and ends of learning and information 
which could not conveniently be disposed of else- 
where. Incidentally it was to serve for the enter- 
tainment, and probably also for the profit, of future 
generations. The notion of such a book occurs in 
Southey 's correspondence as early as 1805 when he 
urges his friend Bedford to the composition of a book 
of sublime nonsense, requiring "more wit, more sense, 
more reading, more knowledge, more learning, than 
go to the composition of half the wise ones in the 
world." ^ In another letter ^ he sends him a chapter 
for insertion in the proposed work. As his friend did 
not respond to repeated goading, Southey determined 
to carry out the idea himself. For a groundwork 
he adopted the story of Dr. Daniel Dove and his 
horse Nobs. This story, which he had first heard 
from Coleridge, was a favorite in his household, and 
its humor lay in making it as long-winded as possible. 
^ Life, II, 337. 2 Warter, II, 362. 



64 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

What the initial idea grew to is best told in Southey's 
own words: ''The author began it in his blithest 
years, with the intention of saying, under certain 
restrictions, quidlibet de guolibet, and making it a 
receptacle for his shreds and patches ; beginning in 
jest, he grew more and more in earnest as he pro- 
ceeded ; he dreamed over it and brooded over it — 
laid it aside for months and years, resumed it after 
long intervals, and more often latterly in thoughtful- 
ness than in mirth ; fancied, perhaps, at last, that he 
could put into it more of his mind than could con- 
veniently be produced in any other form." ^ He had 
no doubt that the result was a great and unusual 
book: "Such a variety of ingredients I think never 
before entered into any book which had a thread of 
continuity running through it. I promise you there 
is as much sense as nonsense there. It is very 
much like a trifle, where you have whipped cream at 
the top, sweetmeats below, and a good sohd founda- 
tion of cake well steeped in ratafia. You will find a 
Hberal expenditure of long-hoarded stores, such as 
the reading of few men could supply; satire and 
speculation ; truths, some of which might beseem 
the bench or the pulpit, and others that require the 
sanction of the cap and bells for their introduction. 
And, withal, a narrative interspersed with interludes 
of every kind, yet still continuous upon a plan of its 
own, varying from grave to gay, and taking as wild 
and yet as natural a course as one of our mountain 
streams." ^ To round out his estimate of the work, 
it should be observed that he saw in it "a little of 
Rabelais, but not much ; more of Tristram Shandy, 
somewhat of Burton, and perhaps more of Montaigne," 
with a quintum quid predominating. ^ 

1 Life, VI, 268. 2 Ibid., V, 190. ^ Ibid., VI, 269. 



MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 65 

From this self-appreciation, needless to say, very 
large deductions have to be made. No one has 
succeeded in detecting any essential resemblance in 
"The Doctor" to Rabelais or Sterne, to Burton or 
Montaigne. Miscellaneous as are the materials of 
these writers and whimsically vagrant their methods, 
their writings are all pervaded by a shaping person- 
ahty and held together by a consistent bond of 
thought and feeling. Southey's materials seem to 
have passed through no process of fusion. Too large 
a proportion of the contents is colorless and intract- 
able to any kind of Hterary handhng, is nothing more, 
in short, than a bald transcription from his common- 
place books. The places are not many where three 
or four successive chapters can be read with a sus- 
tained interest. As numerous as the pedantic diver- 
sions, and much more annoying, are the attempts at 
humor which are apparently dictated by some 
traditional demand for comic contrast or relief, but 
have no visible justification other than they might 
gain by being successful. A passage of quiet reflec- 
tion or of straightforward and artless narrative is 
sure to be followed by a loud outbreak of animal 
spirits, crude horseplay, or sheer vulgar nonsense. 
The severe chastisement which has been visited on 
Southey for his numerous offences of this kind is on 
the whole deserved. He goes about his task of 
creating wit with an elaborateness that looks like 
maHce. He spins a tasteless joke out in a dozen 
pages or loads down a slightly whimsical notion with 
a mass of heavy pedantry ; he puns as tediously as 
an Elizabethan and finds delight in the most childlike 
accumulation of words and sounds. There can be 
no doubt that he is enjoying himself as hugely as any 
child all the while, but the effect on the reader is 



66 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

either yawn-provoking or merely painful. Still, one 
ought not to be blinded, by a just resentment, to a 
recognition of the genuine sense of fun with which 
Southey was gifted and which on occasion he indulged 
without any violation of good taste. He is at his 
best when giving vent to a mood of quiet playfulness. 
His pedantry serves him well in a mediaeval dis- 
quisition on the inferiority of woman, and he applies 
his elaborateness successfully to the calculation, in- 
teresting in the age of efficiency, of the time con- 
sumed in shaving. There was a vein of drollery in 
him which combined with his innocence of heart and 
goodness of nature to produce such pleasant and 
winsome passages as the Memoir of the Cats of 
Greta Hall. These elements, too, are a large in- 
gredient in the Story of the Three Bears, for which 
Southey 's anticipation that he would be blest by all 
who love to tell stories to their children has been 
fully realized. 

From speaking of the defects of "The Doctor" we 
have insensibly been led to mention some of its en- 
tertaining episodes. Though the Story of the Three 
Bears might alone suffice to redeem the book from 
oblivion, there are many other things in it, shining 
like so many bits of gold in a heap of dross, that are 
worthy of the labor required to extricate them. 
When the first two volumes were pubhshed in 1834, 
some of the reviewers treated them as a novel because 
of the overshadowing attractiveness of the chapters 
concerned with the narrative of Daniel Dove. The 
number of volumes in time grew to seven, but the 
story of Daniel Dove and Mrs. Dove made no ma- 
terial progress, and those earlier chapters remained 
the most attractive in the book. They reflect from 
a new angle Southey's amiable character, his tastes, 



MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 67 

his ideals of English life and conduct, much as his 
other writings do, but in a more concentrated manner 
and with touches of dramatic vividness. They 
introduce the reader to an old-fashioned English 
homestead with its curious and old-fashioned assort- 
ment of books. The persons who live in it from one 
generation to another are old-fashioned in their 
simple, kindly, uninquiring humanity. They think 
in an old-fashioned way and they make love in an 
old-fashioned way, — which is a way unknown in 
the novels of any generation — without sentimental- 
ity and without passion. For their sweet naturalness 
and idyllic charm, the love story of Leonard and 
Margaret and the winning of Deborah Bacon by the 
Doctor are entitled to a place of distinction in English 
prose. In addition to these episodes there are pages 
of observation and reflection which, if they are never 
profound, are often sensible and agreeable, their 
vein being that of the eighteenth century essayists 
seasoned with a quaint, antique sauce borrowed from 
the graver writers of the seventeenth. These pas- 
sages, combined with some scattered through his 
other works, make up a body of mixed prose on the 
strength of which Southey may claim a position of 
respect among the writers of the familiar essay. 



CONCLUSION 

The foregoing summary, if it has led to no general 
reversal of judgment on the bulk of Southey's prose, 
has at least tried to bring into relief the many ad- 
mirable things in it which are commonly buried in a 
sweeping censure of the whole. By his activity in 
behalf of the Hterature of the Peninsula, Southey has 
contributed two notable romances for the enjoyment 
of EngHsh readers and has played the part of a pioneer 
in the modern study of Spanish and Portuguese lit- 
erature. He produced histories all of which are 
distinguished by passages of excellent and entertain- 
ing writing, while some are permanently valuable for 
the quantity of unprecedented research which they 
embody. He wrote biographies of distinctive merit 
and one of them has become a classic. In his mis- 
cellaneous works he gave play to moods of fancy 
and reflection with occasional happy results and left 
an image of a serene existence which smells sweetly 
to after ages, of a Kfe constant in its devotion to a 
high sense of duty, lovable in the piety of its domes- 
tic relations and in its wider humanity. His per- 
sonal virtues speak more appealingly in the inti- 
mate passages of the Colloquies and "The Doctor" 
than they do in his private letters. Paradoxical as 
it may sound, the letters very seldom reveal the 
intimate charm of Southey's confidences to the 
pubhc. They are nearly all letters of news; his 
ideas and opinions appear in them abundantly, but 

68 



CONCLUSION 69 

in the form of flat, categorical statements. The 
reader misses in them the atmosphere of leisurely 
reflection, the tone of quiet rumination. 

The sum that has thus been placed to Southey's 
credit is not a mean one. It estabhshes a claim to 
remembrance for what his contemporaries united in 
calling the most "elegant and classical" prose of his 
time. The praises of Southey's style are often enough 
repeated, in empty echoes, perhaps, of its once sound- 
ing fame. The epithets "elegant and classical" had 
a significance in the mouths of his contemporaries 
which they would not have now. A generation 
which had just begun to taste the glitter and novelty 
and elaborateness of Hazlitt and Lamb and De 
Quincey, which had not yet been led away by the 
brilHant rhetoric of Carlyle and Ruskin, but still 
looked back to the eighteenth century for its ideal 
patterns, naturally regarded purity and propriety as 
the great excellences. In the fundamental virtues 
of style Southey could hardly be surpassed. His 
own oft-repeated precept to those who sought advice 
on the art of writing is contained in the famiUar 
lesson of all text-books, to think of the subject and 
let the expression take care of itself This, at any 
rate, is the initial process in his practice and results 
in simpHcity and perspicuity. It is generally fol- 
lowed by a process of refinement in which "every 
sentence is then weighed upon the ear, euphony 
becomes a second object, and ambiguities are re- 
moved." ^ On that quality of euphony which in 
Latin rhetoric is called "numerousness," Southey 
set a utihtarian value. "Numerous prose," he says, 
in distinguishing it from poetic prose, "not only 
carries with it a charm to the ear but affords such 

^ Life, VI, 99. 



70 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

facility to the utterance, that the difference between 
reading aloud from a book so composed, or from one 
which has been written without any feeling of nu- 
merousness on the writer's part, is as great and percep- 
tible as the difference between traveling upon an old 
road, or a macadamised one." "Numerous prose 
and poetical prose," he observes, "are things as 
different as gracefulness and affectation."^ "Clear- 
ness" and "euphony" — it requires only "force" 
to complete the familiar formula, and this term 
occurs in Southey's theory only less insistently than 
the other two. The three combined are excellent 
preservatives of good matter, but they do not suffice 
to exalt into memorable rehef the individual sub- 
stance of a writer's personality. Of this, also, Southey 
had more than an inkling, for he cited the superiority 
of Tacitus and Sallust over Livy to illustrate the 
advantage of "a little peculiarity of style" in helping 
to nail down the matter to the memory.- In his 
own Commonplace Books there are many detached 
sentences, figurative, sparkling, pointed, epigram- 
matic which testify to his possession of a power held 
in restraint in his formal writing. But he feared any 
tendency to an extreme and dreaded the growth of 
a mannerism. He condoned an original style in 
persons in whom it was associated with original 
mental powers, in Sir Thomas Browne, in Dr. John- 
son, or in Gibbon,^ but shunned to fall into the 
errors of an imitator. Through the rejection of all 
the more conspicuous ornaments, his style becomes 
what Professor Elton calls it — achromatic. It has 
harmony, and it often has animation, but it is des- 
titute of color and of richness, of nearly everything 
that distinguished his romantic contemporaries. 
* The Doctor, Interch. 17. ^ i^ij^^ jj^ jg^ 3 /j^(/_^ v, 240. 



CONCLUSION 71 

Southey succeeded in keeping his poetic muse at a 
safe distance while composing in the lower harmony. 
Southey maintained that his style moulded itself to 
whatever subject it was applied, that it varied for 
each work that he undertook.^ But the force of this 
claim is diminished by the comparative narrowness of 
his range. Narrow it must be called in relation to 
stylistic demands, for most of his writings fall under 
simple exposition and historical narrative. Within 
this field the variety of topics did call for some dif- 
ferences of treatment. It has already been pointed 
out how he created a quaintly archaic style for his 
Spanish romances from the old EngHsh chroniclers. 
In other instances it is interesting to observe how 
dexterously he accommodates his manner to that of 
the sources which he is handling. In the "Naval 
History," when he recounts the exploits of Sir Walter 
Manny, it is as if Froissart himself were writing.^ 
He falls naturally into the same vocabulary and 
structure of sentence ; he assumes the same sim- 
plicity of tone and chivalrous spirit. He tells an old 
legend of a merman ^ or the popular story of the 
blacksmith and Hubert de Burgh with all the naive 
credulity of a mediaeval narrator.^ This was not 
the result of dehberate imitation but of a sympathetic 
adaptabihty. Macaulay thought that the "Life 
of Nelson" was practically ready-written in the ma- 
terials which Southey had the good sense or luck not 
to spoil. He does not give him sufficient credit for 
the power of raising himself to the height of a heroic 
argument such as he loftily displays not alone in the 
"Life of Nelson" but in the description of the sieges 
of Zaragoza in the "Peninsular War." The style, 
on the whole, was as flexible as the subjects de- 

^ Warkr, I, 404. 2 d^, y. ^ j^ „5_ 4 j^ jgj. 



72 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

manded, but Southey did not call upon it to display 
a wide gamut of feelings and ideas. He had no 
spiritual complexities to unriddle, no conflicts of 
strong emotions to resolve into a harmony, no shades 
and refinements of intellectual subtlety to illuminate. 
For his vision everything was simple ; he knew 
unhesitatingly the right from the wrong, he loved 
wholeheartedly and he hated wholeheartedly. His 
pleasures were honest and wholesome, his ideals 
sincere and straightforward, and this is the char- 
acter reflected by his personal prose — a serene and 
simple harmony subdued to an even tone of grace- 
fully measured discourse. The strain is single but 
it is worthy of recollection. 

Southey's fame is not what it was in his own time, 
and yet there is a fallacy in citing his fate to illustrate 
the liabiHty of great contemporary reputations to 
decay. There would be Httle exaggeration in saying 
that the balanced judgment of his accomplishment 
does not at present differ from the balanced judgment 
that could have been obtained in his own day. His 
name necessarily loomed large because of his limitless 
activity in many fields, — in poetry, because of the 
novelty of his theories and the strangeness of his 
themes, — in prose, because he was a prolific writer 
in an acceptable and agreeable style on topics of 
immediate popularity and practical interest. But 
the mark of mortality was on most of his subjects, 
ephemeral contributions to periodicals, and histories 
such as time inevitably supersedes. The recognition 
of Southey's soHd talents was joined with no illusion 
as to the elements of endurance in his work. It is 
not necessary to go to the Edinburgh Review to find 
his powers discounted. His imperfect information 
on some of the subjects on which he presumed to 



CONCLUSION 73 

write with authority, his dogmatism, his prejudices, 
his painful efforts at humor, and above all, the 
deficiency of his reasoning faculty — everything, 
in fact, that vitiates his work for posterity — are 
often enough touched on in Blackwood's Magazine. 
"Never truly was such a mistake," that Tory cham- 
pion once remarked, "as for him to make his appear- 
ance in an age of restlessly vigorous thought, dis- 
dainful originaHty of opinion, intolerance for long- 
windedness, and scorn of mountains in labor." ^ 
Only the circumstance of his personal connection 
prevented Southey from becoming equally the butt 
for the Quarterly Review. When in his anxiety to 
preserve the anonymity of "The Doctor," he pos- 
itively denied his authorship to Lockhart, the latter 
in innocent good faith wrote a review which, while 
recognizing generously the better features of the 
work, dehvered some home truths which must have 
occasioned exquisite torture to Southey. He might 
overlook or even be flattered by abuse from a political 
rival, but to have his own organ tell him that "two- 
thirds of his performance look as if they might have 
been penned in the vestibule of Bedlam," and to be 
rebuked there for his bitter sneers at Lord Byron, for 
his "clumsy and grossly affected contempt for Mr. 
Jeffrey," and for "the heavy magniloquence of his 
self-esteem" — all this could hardly have been 
pleasant to a man with a much thicker skin.^ It 
was in the Quarterly Review, too, that Southey's 
pretensions were examined with the most critical 
coldness after his death and that his talents were 
assigned a secondary place.^ The balance is restored, 
curiously enough, by the posthumous appreciation 
of the Edinburgh Review, which spoke of Southey as 

* XV, 209. ^ li, 68-96. * Ixxxviii, 246. 



74 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

"a writer and a man of whom England has reason 
to be proud," ^ and again as "one whose failings are 
written in water and whose virtues are recorded on 
tablets more enduring than monumental brass." ^ 
This is praise for the man provoked by a perusal of 
his letters, of those letters by which he has chiefly 
held his place in the succeeding years. But the 
combined utterances clearly proclaim the unpreju- 
diced verdict of his own generation, and the verdict 
has stood essentially unaltered. Southey's character 
rose buoyant while the mass of his prose labor was 
allowed to sink by its natural weight. The general 
submersion has, however, involved some matter of 
pleasant pith which it may be deemed an act of piety 
to restore to the eyes of men. In this act no reversal 
of existing estimates is implied. Taken in connec- 
tion with the whole of the foregoing account, it 
should, however, show that the prestige which Southey 
enjoyed was natural and well merited and that 
something of him still remains for lovers of good 
prose to enjoy. 

^ Ixxxvii, 369. ' xciii, 372. 



SELECTIONS 



THE LIBRARY 

I WAS in my library, making room upon the shelves 
for some books which had just arrived from New 
England, removing to a less conspicuous station 
others which were of less value and in worse dress, 
when Sir Thomas entered. You are employed, said 
he, to your heart's content. Why, Montesinos, with 
these books, and the delight you take in their con- 
stant society, what have you to covet or desire? 

Montesinos 
Nothing, — except more books. 

Sir Thomas More 
Crescit, indulgens sibi, dirus hydrops} 

Montesinos 

Nay, nay, my ghostly monitor, this at least is no 
diseased desire ! If I covet more, it is for the want 
I feel and the use which I should make of them. 
''Libraries," says my good old friend George Dyer, 
a man as learned as he is benevolent, — "libraries 
are the wardrobes of literature, whence men, properly 
informed, might bring forth something for ornament, 
much for curiosity, and more for use." ^ These 
books of mine, as you well know, are not drawn 

1 The malignant dropsy grows by pampering itself. 
^ History of Cambridge, vol. i, p. 6. 
77 



7$ SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

up here for display, however much the pride of 
the eye may be gratified in beholding them; they 
are on actual service. Whenever they may be dis- 
persed, there is not one among them that will ever be 
more comfortably lodged, or more highly prized by 
its possessor ; and generations may pass away before 
some of them will again find a reader. — It is well that 
we do not moraHze too much upon such subjects, — 

For foresight is a melancholy gift, 

Which bares the bald, and speeds the all-too-swift. 

H. T. 

But the dispersion of a library, whether in retrospect 
or in anticipation, is always to me a melancholy thing. 

Sir Thomas More 

How many such dispersions must have taken place 
to have made it possible that these books should 
thus be brought together here among the Cumberland 
mountains ! 

MONTESINOS 

Many, indeed ; and in many instances most disas- 
trous ones. Not a few of these volumes have been 
cast up from the wreck of the family or convent 
libraries during the late Revolution. Yonder Acta 
Sanctorum belonged to the Capuchines, at Ghent. 
This book of St. Bridget's Revelations, in which not 
only all the initial letters are illuminated, but every 
capital throughout the volume was coloured, came 
from the Carmelite Nunnery at Bruges. That copy 
of Alain Chartier, from the Jesuits' College at Lou- 
vain ; that Imago Primi ScbcuU Societatis, from their 
college at Ruremond. Here are books from Colbert's 
library ; here others from the Lamoignon one. And 



THE LIBRARY 79 

here are two volumes of a work/ not more rare than 
valuable for its contents, divorced, unhappily, and 
it is to be feared, for ever, from the one which should 
stand between them ; they were printed in a con- 
vent at Manila, and brought from thence when that 
city was taken by Sir William Draper ; they have 
given me, perhaps, as many pleasurable hours, (past 
in acquiring information which I could not otherwise 
have obtained) , as Sir William spent years of anxiety 
and vexation in vainly soliciting the reward of his 
conquest. 

About a score of the more out-of-the-way works 
in my possession belonged to some unknown person, 
who seems carefully to have gleaned the book- 
stalls a little before and after the year 1790. He 
marked them with certain ciphers, always at the 
end of the volume. They are in various languages, 
and I never found his mark in any book that was not 
worth buying, or that I should not have bought 
without that indication to induce me. All were in 
ragged condition, and having been dispersed, upon 
the owner's death, probably as of no value, to the 
stalls they had returned ; and there I found this 
portion of them, just before my old haunts as a book- 
hunter in the metropolis were disforested, to make 
room for the improvements between Westminster 
and Oxford Road. I have endeavoured, without 
success, to discover the name of their former posses- 
sor. He must have been a remarkable man ; and the 
whole of his collection, judging of it by that part 
which has come into my hands, must have been sin- 
gularly curious. A book is the more valuable to me 

^ Chronicles of the bare-footed Franciscans in the Philipines, 
China, Japan, &c. I am indebted for this very curious book to the 
kindness of my friend Sir Robert Harry Inglis. 



8o SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

when I know to whom it has belonged, and through 
what "scenes and changes" it has past. 

Sir Thomas More 

You would have its history recorded in the fly leaf, 
as carefully as the pedigree of a race-horse is pre- 
served. 

MONTESINOS 

I confess that I have much of that feeling in which 
the superstition concerning relics has originated ; 
and I am sorry when I see the name of a former 
owner obliterated in a book, or the plate of his arms 
defaced. Poor memorials though they be, yet they 
are something saved for awhile from oblivion; and 
I should be almost as unwilKng to destroy them, as to 
efface the Hie jacet of a tombstone. There may be 
sometimes a pleasure in recognizing them, sometimes 
a salutary sadness. 

Yonder Chronicle of King D. Manoel, by Damiam 
de Goes, and yonder General History of Spain, by 
Esteban de Garibay, are signed by their respective 
authors. The minds of these laborious and useful 
scholars are in their works ; but you are brought into 
a more personal relation with them when you see the 
page upon which you know that their eyes have rested 
and the very characters which their hands have traced. 
This copy of Casaubon's Epistles was sent to me from 
Florence, by Walter Landor. He had perused it care- 
fully, and to that perusal we are indebted for one of 
the most pleasing of his Conversations : these let- 
ters had carried him in spirit to the age of their writer, 
and shown James I. to him in the light wherein James 
was regarded by contemporary scholars ; and under 
the impression thus produced, Landor has written 



THE LIBRARY 8l 

of him in his happiest mood, calmly, philosophically, 
feelingly, and with no more of favourable leaning 
than justice will always manifest when justice is 
in good humour and in charity with all men. The 
book came from the palace Kbrary at Milan, — how, 
or when abstracted, I know not; but this beautiful 
dialogue would never have been written had it 
remained there in its place upon the shelf, for the 
worms to finish the work which they had begun. 
Isaac Casaubon must be in your society. Sir Thomas, 
— for where Erasmus is, you will be, and there also 
Casaubon will have his place among the wise and the 
good. Tell him, I pray you, that due honour has in 
these days been rendered to his name by one who, 
as a scholar, is qualified to appreciate his merits, 
and whose writings will be more durable than monu- 
ments of brass or marble. 

Sir Thomas More 

Is there no message to him from Walter Landor's 
friend ? 

MONTESINOS 

Say to him, since you encourage me to such bold- 
ness, that his letters could scarcely have been perused 
with deeper interest by the persons to whom they 
were addressed, than they have been by one, at the 
foot of Skiddaw, who is never more contentedly em- 
ployed than when learning from the Hving minds of 
other ages ; one who would gladly have this expres- 
sion of respect and gratitude conveyed to him ; 
and who trusts that, when his course is finished here, 
he shall see him face to face. 

Here is a book with which Lauderdale amused 
himself, when Cromwell kept him prisoner in Windsor 



82 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

Castle : he has recorded his state of mind during that 
imprisonment by inscribing in it, with his name, and 
the dates ^ of time and place, the Latin word Durate, 
and the Greek Olareov koI eXina-reov ."^ — Here is a 
memorial of a different kind inscribed in this "Rule^ 
of Penance of St. Francis, as it is ordered for religious 
women." — "I beseech my deare mother humbly to 
accept of this exposition of our holy rule, the better 
to conceive what your poor child ought to be, who 
daly beges your blessing. Constantia Francisco." 
— And here in the Apophthegmata, collected by Con- 
rad Lycosthenes, and published after drastic expur- 
gation, by the Jesuits, as a common-place book, some 
Portugueze has entered a hearty vow ^ that he would 
never part with the book, nor lend it to any one. — 
Very different was the disposition of my poor old Lis- 
bon acquaintance, the Abbe, who, after the old 
humaner form, wrote in all his books (and he had a 
rare collection) Ex libris Francisci Gamier, et ami- 
corum} 

Sir Thomas More 

How peaceably they stand together, — Papists 
and Protestants side by side ! 

MONTESINOS 

Their very dust reposes not more quietly in the 
cemetery. Ancient and Modern, Jew and Gentile, 
Mohammedan and Crusader, French and English, 
Spaniards and Portugueze, Dutch and BraziHans, 

^ The date is 22 Oct. 1657. The book is Pia Hilaria Angelini 
Gazai, of which an edition in two volumes, 1 2mo, was that year pub- 
lished in London by R. Pepper, of Christ's College, Cambridge. 

2 One must bear and hope. ' Douay, 1644. 

* Faqo voto a Jesu Chrislo da nao largar este livro da mad e empreS' 
talhe a alguem. Anno Dni. 1664. 

' From the library of Francis Gamier and his friends. 



THE LIBRARY 83 

fighting their old battles, silently now, upon the same 
shelf : Fernam Lopez and Pedro de Ayala ; John de 
Laet and Barlasus, with the historians of Joam 
Fernandes Vieira ; Fox's Martyrs and the Three 
Conversions of Father Persons ; Cranmer and Ste- 
phen Gardiner ; Dominican and Franciscan ; Jesuit 
and Philosophe (equally misnamed) ; Churchmen and 
Sectarians ; Roundheads and Cavaliers ! 

Here are God's conduits, grave divines ; and here 

Is nature's secretary, the philosopher : 

And wily statesmen, which teach how to tie 

The sinews of a city's mystic body ; 

Here gathering chroniclers ; and by them stand 

Giddy fantastic poets of each land. Donne 

Here I possess these gathered treasures of time, the 
harvest of so many generations, laid up in my gar- 
ners : and when I go to the window there is the lake, 
and the circle of the mountains, and the ilhmitable 
sky. 

Sir Thoaias More 

Felicemque voco pariter studiique locique I ^ 

MONTESINOS 

— meritoque probas artesque locumque.^ 
The simile of the bees, 

Sic vos non vohis mellificatis apes^ 
has often been applied to men who made literature their 
profession ; and they among them to whom worldly 
wealth and wordly honour are objects of ambition, 
may have reason enough to acknowledge its appli- 
cability. But it will bear a happier application, and 

^ I call you blessed alike in your studies and your situation. 
2 And justly do you approve both my pursuits and situation. 
^ So (like the) bees you make honey but not for yourselves. 



84 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

with equal fitness ; for, for whom is the purest honey 
hoarded that the bees of this world elaborate, if it 
be not for the man of letters? The exploits of the 
kings and heroes of old, serve now to fill story books 
for his amusement and instruction. It was to de- 
light his leisure and call forth his admiration that 
Homer sung, and Alexander conquered. It is to 
gratify his curiosity that adventurers have traversed 
deserts and savage countries, and navigators have 
explored the sea from pole to pole. The revolutions 
of the planet which he inhabits are but matters for 
his speculation; and the deluges and conflagrations 
which it has undergone, problems to exercise his 
philosophy, — or fancy. He is the inheritor of what- 
ever has been discovered by persevering labour, or 
created by inventive genius. The wise of all ages 
have heaped up a treasure for him, which rust doth 
not corrupt, and which thieves cannot break through 
and steal. — I must leave out the moth, — for even 
in this climate care is required against its ravages. 

Sir Thomas More 

Yet, Montesinos, how often does the worm-eaten 
volume outlast the reputation of the worm-eaten 
author ! 

Montesinos 

Of the living one also ; for many there are of whom 
it may be said, in the words of Vida, that — 

— ipsi 
Saepe suis super ant monumenlis; illaudatique 
Extremum ante diem foetus flevere caducos, 
Viventesque sues viderunt funera famce} 

^Themselves often survive their own monuments; unpraised, 
before they died they have wept their perished fruits, and while they 
lived they saw the obsequies of their own fame. 



THE LIBRARY 85 

Some literary reputations die in the birth ; a few are 
nibbled to death by critics, — but they are weakly 
ones that perish thus, such only as must otherwise 
soon have come to a natural death. Somewhat 
more numerous are those which are overfed with 
praise, and die of the surfeit. Brisk reputations, 
indeed, are Hke bottled twopenny, or pop, — " they 
sparkle, are exhaled, and fly," — not to heaven, but 
to the Limbo. To live among books, is in this 
respect like hving among the tombs ; — you have in 
them speaking remembrances of mortality. "Be- 
hold this also is vanity!"^ 

Sir Thomas More 
Has it proved to you "vexation of spirit" also? 

MONTESINOS 

Oh no ! for never can any man's life have been past 
more in accord with his own incHnations, nor more 
answerably to his own desires. Excepting that peace 
which, through God's infinite mercy, is derived from 
a higher source, it is to literature, humanly speaking, 
that I am beholden, not only for the means of sub- 
sistence, but for every blessing which I enjoy ; — 
health of mind and activity of mind, contentment, 
cheerfulness, continual employment, and therewith 
continual pleasure. Suavissima vita indies sentire 
se fieri meliorem; ^ and this as Bacon has said, and 

1 "If," says Bishop Bull, " we would have our hearts brought off to 
God, and the serious pursuit of eternal things, let us daily study the 
vanity of this world. Study it, did I say? — There seems little need 
of study, or deep search into this matter. This is a thing that thrusts 
itself upon our thoughts, so that we must think of it, unless we thrust 
it from us." — Vol. i, p. 211. 

2 It is a most sweet Ufe to perceive ourselves growing in virtue 
from day to day. 



86 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

Clarendon repeated, is the benefit that a studious 
man enjoys in retirement. To the studies which 
I have faithfully pursued, I am indebted for friends 
with whom, hereafter, it will be deemed an honour to 
have Uved in friendship ; and as for the enemies which 
they have procured to me in sufficient numbers, — 
happily I am not of the thin-skinned race : they might 
as well fire small shot at a rhinoceros, as direct their 
attacks upon me.^ In omnibus requiem quaesivi, 
said Thomas a Kempis, sed non inveni nisi in angulis 
et lihellis} I too have found repose where he did, 
in books and retirement, but it was there alone I 
sought it : to these my nature, under the direction 
of a merciful Providence, led me betimes, and the 
world can offer nothing which should tempt me from 

them. 

"Sir Thomas More," Colloquy XIV. 

^ "De odio improhorum adversus pietatem, non est quod te tantopere 
moveat: hoc debeat, si hoc novum esset, bonos primum nunc ab improbis 
lacessi. A Deo incipiimt; in nos mitiores esse non possunt. Ego in 
hoc mililid veteranus sum" Scaliger, Isacio Casaubono. Epist. p. 165. 
(In the hatred of the wicked against piety there is nothing which 
should so greatly disturb you : it might if it were something new, if 
good men were now for the first time assailed by the wicked. They 
begin with God and cannot be gentler toward us. I am a veteran 
in this kind of campaigning.) 

2 1 have sought repose everywhere, but I have not found it save 
in retirement and books. 



SCENES FROM THE LAKE COUNTRY 

KESWICK LAKE 

The Lake of Keswick has this decided advantage 
over the others which we have seen, that it imme- 
diately appears to be what it is. Winandermere 
and Ulswater might be mistaken for great rivers, nor 
indeed can the whole extent of either be seen at once ; 
here you are on a land-locked bason of water, a league 
in length, and about half as broad, — you do not 
wish it to be larger, the mirror is in perfect proportion 
to its frame. Skiddaw, the highest and most famous 
of the English mountains, forms its northern boun- 
dary, and seems to rise almost immedately from its 
shore, though it is at the nearest point half a league 
distant, and the town intervenes. One long moun- 
tain, along which the road forms a fine terrace, reaches 
nearly along the whole of its western side ; and 
through the space between this and the next moun- 
tain, which in many points of view appears Uke the 
lower segment of a prodigious circle, a lovely vale is 
seen which runs up among the hills. But the pride 
of the Lake of Keswick is the head, where the moun- 
tains of Borrodale bound the prospect, in a wilder 
and grander manner than words can adequately 
describe. The cataract of Lodore thunders down 
its eastern side through a chasm in the rocks, which 
are wooded with birch and ash trees. It is a little 
river, flowing from a small lake upon the mountains 
about a league distant. The water, though there 
had been heavy rains, was not adequate to the chan- 

87 



88 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

nel ; — indeed it would require a river of considerable 
magnitude to fill it, — yet it is at once the finest work 
and instrument of rock and water that I have ever 
seen or heard. At a little public-house near, where 
the key of the entrance is kept, they have a cannon 
to display the echo ; it was discharged for us, and we 
heard the sound rolHng round from hill to hill, — but 
for this we paid four shillings, — which are very 
nearly a peso duro. So that English echoes appear 
to be the most expensive luxuries in which a traveller 
can indulge. It is true there was an inferior one 
which would have cost only two shillings and six- 
pence ; but when one buys an echo, who would be 
content for the sake of saving eighteenpence, to put 
up with the second best, instead of ordering at once 
the super-extra-double-superfine ? 

We walked once more at evening to the Lake side. 
Immediately opposite the quay is a Kttle island with 
a dwelling-house upon it. A few years ago it was 
hideously disfigured with forts and batteries, a 
sham church, and a new druidical temple, and except 
a few fir-trees the whole was bare. The present 
owner has done all which a man of taste could do in 
removing these deformities : the church is converted 
into a tool-house, the forts demolished, the batteries 
dismantled, the stones of the druidical temple em- 
ployed in forming a bank, and the whole island 
planted. There is something in this place more 
like the scenes of enchantment in the books of chiv- 
alry than Kke anything in our ordinary world, — a 
building the exterior of which promised all the con- 
veniences and elegancies of life, surrounded with all 
ornamental trees, in a Httle island the whole of which 
is one garden, and that in this lovely lake, girt round 
on every side with these awful mountains. Imme- 



KESWICK LAKE 89 

diately behind it is the long dark western moun- 
tain called Brandelow : the contrast between this and 
the island which seemed to be the palace and 
garden of the Lady of the Lake, produced the same 
sort of pleasure that a tale of enchantment excites, 
and we beheld it under circumstances which height- 
ened its wonders, and gave the scene something 
like the unreality of a dream. It was a bright eve- 
ning, the sun shining, and a few white clouds hanging 
motionless in the sky. There was not a breath of 
air stirring, — not a wave, a ripple or wrinkle on the 
lake, so that it became Hke a great mirror, and repre- 
sented the shores, mountains, sky and clouds so vividly 
that there was not the shghtest appearance of water. 
The great mountain-opening being reversed in the 
shadow became a huge arch, and through that magnif- 
icent portal the long vale was seen between mountains 
and bounded by mountain beyond mountain, all this 
in the water, the distance perfect as in the actual 
scene, — the single houses standing far up in the 
vale, the smoke from their chimneys, — every thing 
the same, the shadow and the substance joining at 
their bases, so that it was impossible to distinguish 
where the reaHty ended and the image began. As we 
stood on the shore, heaven and the clouds and the 
sun seemed lying under us ; we were looking down 
into a sky, as heavenly and as beautiful as that over- 
head, and the range of mountains, having one line 
of summit under our feet and another above us, 
were suspended between two firmaments. 

Letters of Espriella, XLII. 

WASDALE 

Having reached the highest point, which is be- 
tween Scafell and Great Gabel, two of the highest 



go SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

mountains in England, we saw Wasdale below bend- 
ing to the south-west, between mountains whose 
exceeding height we were now able to estimate by 
our own experience, — and to the west the sea ap- 
peared through an opening. The descent may with- 
out exaggeration be called tremendous ; not that there 
is danger, but where any road is possible, it is not 
possible to conceive a worse. It is, like the whole 
surface round it, composed of loose stones, and the 
path serpentizes in turns as short and as frequent as 
a snake makes in flight. It is withal as steep as it 
can be to be practicable for a horse. At first we saw 
no vegetation whatever ; after a while only a beau- 
tiful plant called here the stone-fern or mountain 
parsley, a lovely plant in any situation, but appearing 
greener and lovelier here because it was alone. The 
summits every where were wrapt in clouds ; on our 
right, however, we could see rocks rising in pinnacles 
and grotesque forms, — like the lines which I have 
seen a child draw for rocks and mountains, who had 
heard of but never seen them, or the edge of a thunder 
cloud rent by a storm. Still more remarkable than 
the form is the colouring ; the stone is red ; loose 
heaps or rather sheets of stones lay upon the sides, 
— in the dialect of the country they call such patches 
screes, and it is convenient to express them by a single 
word : those which the last winter had brought down 
were in all their fresh redness, others were white 
with lichens; here patches and lines of green were 
interposed. At this height the white lichen pre- 
dominated, but in other parts that species is the 
commonest which is called the geographical from its 
resemblance to the lines of a map ; it is of a bright 
green veined and spotted with black, — so bright as 
if nature, in these the first rudiments of vegetation, 



WASDALE 91 

had rivalled the beauty of her choicest works. Was- 
dale itself, having few trees and many lines of enclo- 
sure, lay below us like a map. 

The Lake was not visible till we were in the valley. 
It runs from north-east to south-west, and one moun- 
tain extends along the whole of its southern side, ris- 
ing not perpendicularly indeed, but so nearly perpen- 
dicular as to afford no path, and so covered with 
these loose stones as to allow of no vegetation, and 
to be called from them The Screes. The stream which 
accompanied our descent was now swoln into a river 
by similar mountain torrents descending from every 
side. The dale is better cultivated at the head than 
Borrodale, being better drained ; and the houses 
seemed to indicate more comfort and more opulence 
than those on the other side the mountain; but 
stone houses and slate roofs have an imposing ap- 
pearance of cleanHness which is not always verified 
upon near inspection. Ash-trees grow round the 
houses, greener than the pine, more graceful, and 
perhaps more beautiful, — yet we Hked them less : 
— was this because even in the midst of summer the 
knowledge that the pine will not fade influences us, 
though it is not directly remembered? 

The rain now ceased, and the clouds grew thinner. 
They still concealed the summits, but now began to 
adorn the mountain, so light and silvery did they 
become. At length they cleared away from the top, 
and we perceived that the mountain whose jagged 
and grotesque rocks we had so much admired was of 
pyramidal shape. That on the southern side of the 
dale head, which was of greater magnitude, and there- 
fore probably, though not apparently, of equal height, 
had three summits. The clouds floated on its side, 
and seemed to chng to it. We thought our shore 



92 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

tamer than the opposite one, till we recollected that 
the road would not be visible from the water ; and 
presently the mountain which had appeared of little 
magnitude or beauty while we passed under it, be- 
came on looking back the most pyramidal of the 
whole, and in one point had a cleft summit like 
Parnassus ; thus forming the third conical mountain 
of the group, which rose as if immediately from the 
head of the Lake, the dale being lost. But of all the 
objects the screes was the most extraordinary. Im- 
agine the whole side of a mountain, a league in length, 
covered with loose stones, white, red, blue and green, 
in long straight lines as the torrents had left them, 
in sheets and in patches, sometimes broken by large 
fragments of rocks which had unaccountably stopt 
in their descent, and by parts which, being too pre- 
cipitous for the stones to rest on, were darkened with 
mosses, — and every variety of form and colour 
was reflected by the dark water at its foot : no trees 
or bushes upon the whole mountain, — all was bare, 
but more variegated by this wonderful mixture of 
coloring than any vegetation could have made it. 
Letters of Esprtella, XLIII. 

WALLA CRAG 

It is no wonder that foreigners, who form their 
notions of England from what they see in its metrop- 
olis, should give such dismal descriptions of an English 
November ; a month when, according to the received 
opinion of continental writers, suicide comes as 
regularly in season with us as geese at Michaelmas, 
and green pease in June. Nothing indeed can be 
more cheerless and comfortless than a comnion No- 
vember day in that huge overgrown city ; the streets 



WALLA CRAG 93 

covered with that sort of thick greasy dirt, on which 
you are in danger of slipping at every step, and the 
sky concealed from sight by a dense, damp, oppres- 
sive, dusky atmosphere, composed of Essex fog and 
London smoke. But in the country November pre- 
sents a very different aspect: there its soft, calm 
weather has a charm of its own ; a stillness and 
serenity unlike any other season, and scarcely less 
dehghtful than the most genial days of Spring. The 
pleasure which it imparts is rather different in kind 
than inferior in degree : it accords as finely with the 
feelings of declining life as the bursting foliage and 
opening flowers of May with the elastic spirits of 
youth and hope. 

But a fine day affects children alike at all seasons 
as it does the barometer. They live in the present, 
seldom saddened with any retrospective thoughts, 
and troubled with no foresight. Three or four days 
of dull sunless weather had been succeeded by a deli- 
cious morning. My young ones were clamorous for 
a morning's excursion. The glass had risen to a 
little above change, but their spirits had mounted to 
the point of settled fair. All things, indeed, animate 
and inanimate, seemed to partake of the exhilarating 
influence. The blackbirds, who lose so little of their 
shyness even where they are most secure, made their 
appearance on the green, where the worms had thrown 
up little circles of mould during the night. The 
smaller birds were twittering, hopping from spray to 
spray and pluming themselves ; and as the tempera- 
ture had given them a vernal sense of joy, there was 
something of a vernal cheerfulness in their song. The 
very flies had come out from their winter quarters, 
where, to their own danger and my annoyance, they 
establish themselves behind the books, in the folds of 



94 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

the curtains, and the crevices of these loose window- 
frames. They were crawHng up the sunny panes, 
bearing in their altered appearance the marks of un- 
comfortable age ; their bodies enlarged, and of a 
greyer brown ; their wings no longer open, clean, and 
transparent, but closed upon the back, and as it 
were encrusted with neglect. Some few were begin- 
ning to brush themselves, but their motions were 
slow and feeble : the greater number had fallen upon 
their backs, and lay unable to recover themselves. 
Not a breath of air was stirring ; the smoke ascended 
straight into the sky, till it diffused itself equally on 
all sides and was lost. The lake lay like a mirror, 
smooth and dark. The tops of the mountains, which 
had not been visible for many days, were clear and 
free from snow : a few Hght clouds, which hovered 
upon their sides, were slowly rising and melting in 
the sunshine. 

On such a day, a holyday having been voted by 
acclamation, an ordinary walk would not satisfy the 
children : — it must be a scramble among the moun- 
tains, and I must accompany them ; — it would do 
me good, they knew it would ; — they knew I did not 
take sufficient exercise, for they had heard me some- 
times say so. One was for Skiddaw Dod, another 
for Causey Pike, a third proposed Watenlath ; and 
I, who perhaps would more willingly have sate at 
home, was yet in a mood to suffer violence, and mak- 
ing a sort of compromise between their exuberant 
activity and my own inclination for the chair and the 
fireside, fixed upon Walla Crag. Never was any 
determination of sovereign authority more willingly 
received : it united all suffrages : Oh yes ! yes ! 
Walla Crag ! was the unanimous reply. Away they 
went to put on coats and clogs, and presently were 



WALLA CRAG 95 

ready each with her little basket to carry out the 
luncheon, and bring home such treasures of mosses 
and lichens as they were sure to find. Off we set ; 
and when I beheld their happiness, and thought how 
many enjoyments they would have been deprived of, 
if their lot had fallen in a great city, I blest God who 
had enabled me to fulfil my heart's desire and live in 
a country such as Cumberland. 

The walk on which we had agreed had just that 
degree of difficulty and enterprize wherein children 
delight and may safely be indulged. I lived many 
years at Keswick before I explored it ; but it has since 
been a favourite excursion with all my guests and 
resident friends who have been active and robust 
enough to accomplish the ascent. You leave the 
Borrodale road about a mile and a half from the town 
a little before it opens upon the terrace, and, cross- 
ing a wall by some stepping stones, go up the wood, 
having a brook, or what in the language of the coun- 
try is called a beck, on the right hand. An artist 
might not long since have found some beautiful 
studies upon this beck, in its short course through 
the wood, where its craggy sides were embowered 
with old trees, the trunks of which, as well as their 
mossy branches, bent over the water : I scarcely 
know any place more dehghtful than this was in a 
sultry day, for the fine composition of the scene, its 
refreshing shade and sound, and the sense of deep 
retirement ; — but the woodman has been there ! 
A little higher up you cross a wall and the elbow of a 
large tree that covers it ; you are then upon the side 
of the open fell, shelving down to the stream, which 
has worked for itself a narrow ravine below. After 
a steep ascent you reach one of those loose walls 
which are common in this country ; it runs across the 



96 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

side of the hill, and is broken down in some places; 
the easier way, or rather the less difficult, is on the 
inner side, over loose and rugged stones, the wreck 
of the crags above. They are finely coloured with a 
yellow or ochrey lichen, which predominates there, 
to the exclusion of the lichen geographicus : its colour 
may best be compared to that of beaten or unbur- 
nished gold ; it is richly blended with the white or 
silvery kind, and interspersed with stone-fern or moun- 
tain-parsley, the most beautiful of all our wild plants, 
resembHng the richest point lace in its fine filaments 
and exquisite indentations. 

The wall ends at the ravine ; just at its termination 
part of it has been thrown down by the sheep or by 
the boys, and the view is thus opened from a point 
which, to borrow a word from the Tourist's Vocabu- 
lary, is a remarkable station. The stream, which 
in every other part of its course has worn for itself 
a deep and narrow channel, flows here for a few yards 
over a level bed of rock, where in fine weather it might 
be crossed with ease, then falls immediately into the 
ravine. A small ash tree bends over the pavement, 
in such a manner that, if you wish to get into the 
bed of the stream, you must either stoop under the 
branches, or stride over them. Looking upward 
there, the sight is confined between the sides of the 
mountain, which on the left is steep and stony, and 
on the right precipitous, except that directly opposite 
there are some shelves, or rather steps of herbage, and 
a few birch, more resembling bushes than trees in their 
size and growth ; these, and the mountain rill, broken, 
flashing, and whitening in its fall where it comes rapidly 
down, but taking in the level part of its course a colour 
of delightful green from the rock over which it runs, 
are the only objects. But on looking back, you be- 



WALLA CRAG 97 

hold a scene of the most striking and peculiar char- 
acter. The water, the rocky pavement, the craggy 
sides, and the ash tree, form the foreground and 
the frame of this singular picture. You have then the 
steep descent, open on one side to the lake, and on the 
other with the wood, half way down and reaching to 
the shore ; the lower part of Derwentwater below, 
with its islands ; the vale of Keswick, with Skiddaw 
for its huge boundary and bulwark, to the North; 
and where Bassenthwaite stretches into the open 
country, a distance of water, hills, and remote hori- 
zon, in which Claude would have found all he desired, 
and more than even he could have represented, had 
he beheld it in the glory of a midsummer sunset. 

This was to be our resting-place, for though the 
steepest ascent was immediately before us, the greater 
part of the toil was over. My young companions 
seated themselves on the fell side, upon some of the 
larger stones, and there in full enjoyment of air and 
sunshine opened their baskets and took their noon- 
day meal, a Httle before its due time, with appetites 
which, quickened by exercise, had outstript the 
hours. My place was on a bough of the ash tree at 
a little distance, the water flowing at my feet, and the 
fall just below me. Among all the sights and sounds 
of Nature there are none which affect me more pleas- 
urably than these. I could sit for hours to watch 
the motion of a brook : and when I call to mind the 
happy summer and autumn which I passed at Cintra, 
in the morning of life and hope, the perpetual gurghng 
of its tanks and fountains occurs among the vivid 
recollections of that earthly Paradise as one of its 
charms. 

When I had satisfied myself with the prospect, I 
took from my waistcoat pocket an Amsterdam 



98 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

edition of the Utopia, given me for its convenient 
portability by one of my oldest and most valued 
friends. It is of the year 1629, and is the smallest 
book in my possession, being not four inches long, 
and less than two in breadth : — Mr. Dibdin would 
shudder to see how some nefarious binder has cut 
it to the quick. Brief as this Httle work is, it has 
introduced into our language a word the meaning 
of which is understood by thousands and tens of 
thousands who have never read the fiction from 
whence it is derived ; while volumes upon volumes of 
metaphysical pohtics have sunk into the dead pool 
of oblivion, without raising even a momentary bubble 
upon its surface. I read till it was time to proceed ; 
and then putting up the book, as I raised my eyes, 
— behold, the author was before me. 

" Sir Thomas More," Colloquy VI. 

DERWENTWATER 

The best general view of Derwentwater is from the 
terrace, between Applethwaite and Milbeck, a little 
beyond the former hamlet. The old roofs and chim- 
nies of that hamlet come finely in the foreground, 
and the trees upon the Ormathwaite estate give 
there a richness to the middle ground, which is want- 
ing in other parts of the vale. From that spot, I 
once saw three artists sketching at the same time ; 
William Westall (who has engraved it among his 
admirable views of Keswick), Glover, and Edward 
Nash, my dear, kind-hearted friend and fellow-trav- 
eller, whose death has darkened some of the bHthest 
recollections of my latter Hfe. I know not from 
which of the surrounding heights it is seen to most 
advantage; any one will amply repay the labor of 



DERWENTWATER 99 

the ascent ; and often as I have ascended them all, 
it has never been without a fresh delight. The best 
near view is from the field adjoining Friar's Crag. 
There it is, that if I had Aladdin's lamp or Fortu- 
natus's purse, — (with leave of Greenwich Hospital 
be it spoken,) I would build myself a house. 

Thither I had strolled on one of those first genial 
days of spring which seem to affect the animal, not 
less than the vegetable creation. At such times, 
even I, sedentary as I am, feel a craving for the open 
air and sunshine, and creep out as instinctively as 
snails after a shower. Such seasons, which have an 
exhilarating effect upon youth, produce a soothing 
one when we are advanced in life. The root of an 
ash tree, on the bank which bends round the Httle 
bay, had been half bared by the waters during one 
of the winter floods, and afforded a commodious 
resting place, whereon I took my seat, at once bask- 
ing in the sun, and bathing as it were in the vernal 
breeze. But delightful as all about me was to eye, 
and ear, and feeling, it brought with it a natural re- 
flection, — that the scene which I now beheld was 
the same which it had been and would continue to 
be, while so many of those, with whom I had formerly 
enjoyed it, were past away. Our day dreams become 
retrospective as we advance in years, and the heart 
feeds as naturally upon remembrance in age, as upon 
hope in youth. 

"Where are they gone, the old familiar faces?" (Lamb) 

I thought of her whom I had so often seen plying her 
little skiff upon the glassy water, — the Lady of the 
Lake. It was like a poet's dream, or a vision of 
romance, to behold her, — and like a vision or a 
dream she had departed ! 



100 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

O gentle Emma, o'er a lovelier form 

Than thine, earth never closed ; nor e'er did Heaven 

Receive a purer spirit from the world ! 

I thought of D.^ the most familiar of my friends dur- 
ing those years when we lived near enough to each 
other for ^familiar intercourse ; — my friend, and the 
friend of all who were dearest to me ; — a man of 
whom all who knew him will concur with me in say- 
ing, that they never knew nor could conceive of one 
more strictly dutiful, more actively benevolent, more 
truly kind, more thoroughly good ; — the pleasantest 
companion, the sincerest counsellor, the most con- 
siderate friend, the kindest host, the welcomest guest. 
After our separation, he had visited me here three 
summers : with him it was that I had first explored 
this Land of Lakes in all directions ; and again and 
again should we have retraced our steps in the wildest 
recesses of these vales and mountains, and lived over 
the past again, if he had) not, too early for all who 
loved him — 

Began the travel of eternity. 

I called to mind my hopeful H ,^ too, so often 

the sweet companion of my morning walks to this 
very spot ; — in whom I had fondly thought my 
better part should have survived me, and 

"With whom, it seemed, my very hfe 
Went half away. 

But we shall meet, — but we shall meet 
Where parting tears shall never flow ; 
And when I think thereon, almost 
I long to go ! "^ 

^ Charles Danvers. 

^ His son Herbert. See Introduction, p. g. 

^ These lines are quoted from a little volume, entitled Solitary 
Hours, which, with the "Widow's Tale," etc., of the same authoress, I 
recommend to all admirers of that poetry that proceeds from the heart. 



DERWENTWATER lOI 

"Thy dead shall live," O Lord ! "together with my 
dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that 
dwell in dust ! for Thy dew is as the dew of herbs, 
and the earth shall cast out the dead!" 

Surely to the sincere behever death would be an 
object of desire instead of dread, were it not for those 
ties, — those heart-strings — by which we are at- 
tached to hfe. Nor indeed do I believe it is natural 
to fear death, however generally it may be thought 
so. From my own feehngs I have little right to judge ; 
for, although habitually mindful that the hour 
Cometh, and even now may be, it has never appeared 
actually near enough to make me duly apprehend its 
effect upon myself. But from what I have observed, 
and what I have heard those persons say whose pro- 
fessions lead them to the dying, I am induced to infer 
that the fear of death is not common, and that where 
it exists, it proceeds rather from a diseased or en- 
feebled mind, than from any principle in our nature. 
Certain it is that, among the poor, the approach of 
dissolution is usually regarded with a quiet and 
natural composure which it is consolatory to con- 
template, and which is as far removed from the dead 
palsy of unbelief, as it is from the delirious raptures 
of fanaticism. Theirs is a true unhesitating faith ; 
and they are willing to lay down the burthen of a 
weary Hfe in the sure and certain hope of a blessed 
immortahty. Who indeed is there that would not 
gladly make the exchange, if he Uved only for him- 
self, and were to leave none who stood in need of 
him, no eyes to weep at his departure, no hearts to 
ache for his loss ? The day of death, says the Preacher, 
is better than the day of one's birth, — a sentence 
to which whoever has Uved long, and may humbly 
^ Isaiah, xxvi, 19. 



I02 SOUTHS Y'S SELECT PROSE 

hope that he has not Hved ill, must heartily assent. 
The excellent Henry Scougal used to say that "ab- 
stracted from the will of God, mere curiosity would 
make him long for another world," How many of 
the ancients committed suicide from the mere weari- 
ness of hfe, a conviction of the vanity of human en- 
joyments, or to avoid the infirmities of old age ! 
This, too, in utter uncertainty concerning a future 
state ; not with the hope of change, for in their 
prospect there was no hope ; but for the desire of 
death. 

"Sir Thomas More," Colloquy IX. 



BLENCATHRA ~ THRELKELD TARN — THE 
CLIFFORDS 

Of the very many tourists who are annually brought 
to this Land of Lakes by what have now become the 
migratory habits of the opulent classes, there is a 
great proportion of persons who are desirous of mak- 
ing the shortest possible tarriance in any place ; 
whose object is to get through their undertaking 
with as little trouble as they can, and whose inquiries 
are mainly directed to find out what it is not neces- 
sary for them to see ; happy when they are comforted 
with the assurance, that it is by no means required 
of them to deviate from the regular track, and that 
that which can not be seen easily, need not be seen 
at all. In this way our oi iroXXol take their degree 
as Lakers. 

Nevertheless, the number of those who truly 
enjoy the opportunities which are thus afforded them, 
and have a genuine generous delight in beholding 
the grander and lovelier scenes of a mountainous 



SCENES FROM THE LAKE COUNTRY 103 

region, is sufficient to render this a good and whole- 
some fashion. The pleasure which they partake 
conduces as much to moral and intellectual improve- 
ment, as to health, and present hilarity. It produces 
no distaste for other scenes, no satiety, nor other 
exhaustion than what brings with it its own remedy in 
sound sleep. Instead of these, increase of appetite 
grows here by what it feeds on, and they learn to 
seek and find pleasure of the same kind in tamer 
landscapes. They who have acquired in these coun- 
tries a love of natural scenery, carry with them in 
that lovu a perpetual source of enjoyment ; resem- 
bling in this respect the artist, who, in whatever scenes 
he may be placed, is never at a loss for something 
from which his pencil may draw forth a beauty, 
which uncultivated eyes would fail to discover in the 
object itself. In every country, however poor, there 
is something of "free Nature's grace"; wherever 
there is wood and water, wherever there are green 
fields, — wherever there is an open sky, the feeling 
which has been called forth, or fostered among the 
mountains, may be sustained. It is one of our most 
abiding as well as of our purest enjoyments, — a 
sentiment which seems at once to humble and exalt 
us, which from natural emotions leads us to devotional 
thoughts and religious aspirations, grows therefore 
with our growth, and strengthens when our strength 
is faiUng us. 

I wonder not at those heathens who worshipped in 
high places. There is an elasticity in the mountain 
air, which causes an excitement of spirits, in its im- 
mediate effect like that of wine when, taken in due 
measure, it gladdens the heart of man. The height 
and the extent of the surrounding objects seem 
to produce a correspondent expansion and elevation 



I04 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

of mind ; ^ and the silence and solitude contribute to 
this emotion. You feel as if in another region, 
almost in another world. If a tourist in this country 
inquires which of our mountains it may be worth his 
while to ascend, he may be told any, or all. Helvellyn 
and Skiddaw and Blencathra, Scawfell and Great 
Gable, Hindsgarth and Causey Pike, each is unHke 
all the others in the prospect that it presents, each 
has features of its own, and all may well repay the 
labour of ascending them. 

There is Httle or nothing of historical or romantic 
interest belonging to this region. In this respect it 
is very unHke the Scotch Border, where Sir Walter 
can entertain his guests during a morning ride with 
tales of murders, executions, house-besieging and house- 
burning, as parts of family history belonging to every 
homestead of which he comes in sight. The Border 
history is of no better character on the English side ; 
but this part of the country was protected by the Sol- 
way, and by its natural strength, nor does it appear, 
at any time after it became English, to have been 
troubled with feuds. The English Barons, indeed, 
were by no means so often engaged in private wars 
as their Scottish neighbours, or the nobles on the 

^ This feeling has never been more feelingly expressed than by 
Burnet in his fine chapter, de Montibus. " Prcster Coslorum faciem, 
et immensa spacia atherea, stellarumque gratissimum aspedum, oculos 
meos atque animum nihil magis delectare solet quam Oceanum intueri, 
et magnos monies terra. Nescio quid grande hahent et augtistum uterque 
horuin, quo mens excitalur ad ingentes affectus et cogitationes : summum 
rerum A uthorem et Opificem indc facile contuemiir et admiramur, men- 
temque no s tram, qua cum voluptate res magnas contemplatur, non esse 
rem parvam cum gaudio recognoscimus. Et qucecumque umbram in- 
finiti habent, ut habent omnia qua non facile comprehendimiis, ob mag- 
nitudinem rei, et sensus nostri plenitudinem, gratum quendam stuporem 
animo afundunt." — Telluris Theoria Sacra, 1. i. c. 9. 

Aside from the face of the Heavens and the vast regions of the 
air and the most pleasing sight of the stars, nothing is wont to delight 
my eyes and spirit more than to gaze at the ocean and the great 



SCENES FROM THE LAKE COUNTRY 105 

continent ; their contests were with the Crown, 
seldom with each other, and never with their vassals. 
Those contests were carried on at a distance from 
our Lake-land, where the inhabitants, being left in 
peace, seem to have enjoyed it, and never to have 
forfeited its blessings by engaging in the ways, and 
contracting the disposition of marauders. They had, 
therefore, neither ballad heroes, nor ballad poets, 
happy in having afforded no field for the one, and no 
materials of this kind for the other. 

A heap of stones is the doubtful ^ monument of a 
battle which, in the middle of the tenth century, put 
an end to the kingdom of the Cumbrian Britons ; 
after a war in which the victorious allies must have 
been actuated by any motive rather than poHcy; 
the King of South Wales having united with Edmund 
the Elder against a people of his own race, and Ed- 
mund giving the little kingdom, when they had 
conquered it, to the King of Scotland. That heap at 
Dunmailraise is our only historical monument, if 
such it may be called. There is something more for 
the imagination in knowing that three centuries 
earlier, the old bard, Llywarc Hen, was a prince of 
Cumbria, or of a part ^ thereof. He is said to have 

mountains of the earth. Both have a kind of grandeur and august- 
ness by which the mind is aroused to great feelings and contempla- 
tions : through them we readily behold and marvel at the great 
Creator and Artificer of all things, and we perceive with joy that our 
mind, as it contemplates great things with pleasure, is itself of no 
slight consequence. Whatever has the shadow of the infinite, such 
as all things have which we do not easily comprehend, because of its 
vastness and the fullness of our sensation imparts a certain pleasing 
amazement to the mind. 

^ Doubtful, because it is at the division of the two counties, upon 
the high road, and on the only pass, and may very probably have 
been intended to mark the division. 

^ Argoed, which, according to Mr. Owen, was part of the present 
Cumberland : it lay west of the Forest of Celyddon, and was bordered 
by that wood to the east, as the name implies. 



lo6 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

attained the extraordinary age of an hundred and 
fifty; and, having been driven from his own coun- 
try, to have died near Bala, at a place which is still 
called after him, the Cot ^ of Llywarc the Aged. 
From his own lamentations we know that he had 
four-and-twenty sons, "wearing the golden chain, 
leaders of battles, men that were valiant opposers 
of the foe," and that he Hved to see them all slain ! 
St. Herbert, our only Saint, is less remarkable among 
saints than Llywarc among poets ; the single circum- 
stance of his life that has been remembered, or in- 
vented of him, is that of his dying at the same hour 
with his absent friend St. Cuthbert, according to 
their mutual wish and prayer. From St. Herbert 
down to the tragedy of Lord Derwentwater, (who was 
connected with this country only by his possessions 
and his title,) our local history has nothing that leads 
a traveller to connect the scenes through which he 
is passing with past events, — one of the great 
pleasures of travelling, and not the least of its util- 
ities. The story of the Shepherd Lord Clifford 
affords a single exception ; that story, which was 
known only to a few antiquaries, till it was told so 
beautifully in verse by Wordsworth, gives a romantic 
interest to Blencathra. 

They who would ascend this mountain, should go 
from Keswick about six miles along the Penrith road, 
then take the road which branches from it on the left, 
(proceeding along the mountain side toward Heskett 
Newmarket) , and begin to ascend a little way farther 
on by a green shepherd's path, distinctly marked, 
on the left side of a gill. That path may be fol- 
lowed on the mountain toward a Httle stream which 

» Pabell Llywarc Hen, in the parish of Llanvor, in which church, 
according to tradition, he was buried. 



BLENCATHRA 107 

issues from Threlkeld Tarn ; ^ you leave it, keeping 
the stream on the right, and mount a short and rugged 
ascent, up which a horse may be led without difiS.- 
culty ; and thus, with Httle fatigue, the Tarn is 
reached. A wild spot it is as ever was chosen by a 
cheerful party where to rest, and to take their merry 
repast upon a summer's day. The green mountain, 
the dark pool, the crag under which it Lies, and the 
little stream which steals from it, are the only ob- 
jects ; the gentle voice of that stream the only sound, 
unless a kite be wheeling above, or a sheep bleats on 
the fell side. A silent, solitary place ; and such soli- 
tude heightens social enjoyment, as much as it con- 
duces to lonely meditation. 

Ascending from hence toward the brow of the moun- 
tain, you look back through the opening, where the 
stream finds its way, to a distant view of the open 
country about Penrith, with the long Hne of Cross- 
fell bounding it. When the brow is reached, you 
are on the edge of that bold and rugged front which 
Blencathra presents when seen from the road to 
Matterdale, or from the Vale of St. John's. A por- 
tion of the hill, (Hall-fell it is called,) somewhat 
pyramidal in shape, stands out here like an enormous 
buttress, separated from the body of the mountain 
on all sides by deep ravines. These have apparently 
been formed by some water-spout, bursting upon 
what was once the green breast of the mountain, and 
thus opening water-courses, which the rain and 
storms have continually been deepening. In looking 
down these ravines from the brow you have a sense 

^ Absurd accounts have been published both of the place itself, 
and the difficulty of reaching it. The Tarn has been said to be so 
deep that the reflection of the stars may be seen in it at noon day, — 
and that the sun never shines on it. One of these assertions is as 
fabulous as the other, — and the Tarn, like all other Tarns, is shallow. 



Io8 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

of perfect security ; there is not even an appearance 
of danger ; and yet, if the whole depth below were 
one precipice, the effect could not be grander. At 
the foot is the cultivated valley, where the Glender- 
amaken, collecting the waters of Blencathra from 
the north and east, winds along to join St. John's 
Beck, and form with it the Greta. In front are the 
Ullswater mountains. The Vale of St. John's and 
Nathdale open into the subjacent valley; you look 
over Nathdale fell, which divides them, and beyond it 
Leatheswater is seen, in its length, extending between 
Helvellyn and its own fells. Derwentwater is to the 
right of this, under the western side of those fells, 
and the semicircle is everywhere closed by moun- 
tains, range behind range. My friend, William West- 
all, who has seen the grandest and loveliest features 
of nature in the East Indies and in the West, with 
the eye of a painter, and the feeHng of a poet, burst 
into an exclamation of delight and wonder when I 
led him to this spot. 

From Linthwaite Pike, which is the highest point 
of Blencathra, keeping along the brow, you pass in 
succession the points called Lilefell, Priestman and 
Knott Crag. They who perform the whole excur- 
sion on foot, may descend from hence, in a south- 
westerly direction, to the Glenderaterra, cross that 
rivulet by a wooden bridge, and return to Keswick 
through Brundholm wood, by a very beautiful road, 
commanding views of the Greta in its manifold wind- 
ings below, and, farther on, of the town, the lake, 
and the whole hne of mountains from the Borrodale 
fells to Withop. But for women, and those from 
whom time has taken the superfluous strength of 
youth, it is better to be provided with carriages to 
the point where the ascent is commenced, and to 



BLENCATHRA I09 

rejoin them at the village of Threlkeld, descending, 
after they have passed Knott Crag, upon that vil- 
lage by a green shepherds' path. The path is not 
immediately perceptible from the heights, but, by 
making toward the village, you come upon it, and on 
so steep a decHvity it is a great reHef. Threlkeld, 
when it is approached by the high road on either 
side, or from the Vale of St. John's, appears one of 
the least agreeable of our villages ; it presents no 
character of amenity or beauty, and seems rather to 
be threatened by the mountain,^ than sheltered by it. 
Very different is its appearance when you descend 
upon it from Highbrow-fell by this green and pleas- 
ant path. Then, indeed, the village is beautiful; 
not merely as a habitable human spot, the first which 
we reach upon issuing from some wild and uncul- 
tivated soHtude, but in itself, and its position. The 
mountain, as thus seen, appears to protect and em- 
bosom it; in front there is the cheerfulness and the 
fertility of the open valley; old sycamores extend 
their deep shade over some of the long low-roofed 
outhouses ; there is the little chapel to complete the 

^ Blencathra is indeed at times an ill neighbour to this poor village. 
Waterspouts are either more frequent there, or from their effects 
have been more frequently observed, than on any other of our moun- 
tains, except it be Helvellyn, on the side of the Vale of St. John's. 
When they break, the houses are deluged, the fields covered with 
stones and gravel, the bridges sometimes blown up, and the road 
rendered impassable. Some years ago I went to the village on the 
day after one of these Bursts, as they are significantly called. The 
people were clearing their houses of the wreck which had been de- 
posited there by the water in its passage, and all the furniture from 
the lower rooms was set out in the street, as if there had been a general 
distress. Three parallel channels had been formed on the slope of 
the great buttress (Hall-fell) where the cloud discharged its whole 
weight of waters ; and these were from five to six feet deep, and 
eighteen wide. We knew at Keswick that a waterspout had fallen 
in this direction, because the Greta had risen suddenly, and was 
unusually discoloured. 



no SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

picture, and sanctify, as it were, the scene ; and there 
is the music of the mountain stream, accompanying 
the latter part of the descent, in unison with all the 
objects, and with the turn of mind which those 
objects induce. 

Here was the family seat of that good Sir Lancelot 
Threlkeld, who, after John Lord Clifford (the Chfford 
of Shakespere's dramas) was slain at Ferrybridge, 
and his lands seized, and his posterity attainted by 
the triumphant House of York, married his widow, 
Margaret Bromfiett, Baroness Vesey, and was, as 
the records of the family say, "a very kind and lov- 
ing husband to her," helping to conceal her two 
sons. The youngest was sent beyond sea, and 
died, while yet a child, in the Low Countries. Henry, 
the elder, who was about six or seven years old when 
his father was killed, "she committed to the care 
of certain shepherds whose wives ^ had served her, 
which shepherds and their wives kept him concealed 
sometimes at Lonsborrow in Yorkshire, (which was 
part of her inheritance,) and sometimes in Cumber- 
land, (here among these mountains,) and elsewhere, 
for the space of almost four-and-twenty years." 
There he was bred up as a shepherd's boy "in a very 
mean condition," and thus "miraculously preserved," 
for, " had he been known to be his father's son and 
heir, he would either have been put in prison, or put 
to death, so odious was the memory of his father for 
killing the young Earl of Rutland, and for being such 
a desperate commander in the battle against the 
House of York." 

^ " Which shepherds' wives had formerly been servants in that 
family, attending the nurse that gave him suck, which made him, 
being a child, more willing to submit to that mean condition ; where 
they infused into him the belief that he must either be content to 
live in that manner, or be utterly undone." 



THE CLIFFORDS III 

The Shepherd Lord was the happiest of his race; 
and, falling upon peaceful times after his restoration, 
was enabled to indulge the peaceful and thoughtful 
disposition which his early fortunes had produced. 

"Love had he found in huts where poor men lie; 
His daily teachers had been woods and rills, 
The silence that is in the starry sky, 
The sleep that is among the lonely hills. 

In him the savage virtue of the race. 
Revenge, and all ferocious thoughts were dead ; 
Nor did he change ; but kept in lofty place 
The wisdom which adversity had bred. 

Glad were the vales and every cottage hearth ; 
The Shepherd Lord was honoured more and more : 
And ages after he was laid in earth, 
'The Good Lord Clifford' was the name he bore." 

(Wordsworth) 

His history is not more remarkable in itself, than 
in the contrast which it affords to that of his ances- 
tors, so many of whom had rendered themselves emi- 
nent by their activity and their abihty in turbulent 
times. The property which they possessed in this 
part of England was originally granted by William 
the Conqueror to one of the Norman chiefs, Ranulph 
de Meschiens, who married William's niece, the 
sister of Hugh Lupus. From his sister it descended 
to Hugh de Morville, one of the murderers of Thomas- 
a-Becket, and having been forfeited in consequence 
of that crime, was granted by King John to Robert 
de Veteripont, who was the son of Morville's sister : 
" the favour of that king, and the marriage of Idonea ^ 

^ It is upon a later personage of the same family that Fuller in his 
quaint way remarks, "the first and last I meet with of that Christian 
name, though proper enough for women, who are to be 'meet helps ' 
to their husbands." 



112 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

his wife, (who was a great heiress,) and his own 
industry, (for he was of an active knowing spirit,) 
were the three steps which raised his fortunes to the 
height they attained." He was, indeed, one of the 
most distinguished men of his age, and to him Appleby 
and Brough, with all their appendages, and the 
Sheriffwick of Westmoreland, were granted in per- 
petuity. He died in peace, at a good old age, a rare 
fortune for men of his station in those days ; his son 
also came to a natural death, dying young ; the grand- 
son fell in battle on the side of Simon de Montfort, 
either at Lewes or at Evesham, and thus the estates 
escheated a second time to the Crown. They were 
restored to his two daughters, one of whom dying 
without issue, they past in marriage with the other 
to the CHffords, who in consequence removed from 
the Wye to the Eden.^ The CHffords took their 
Enghsh appellation from their castle upon the Wye ; 
they were descended from the Dukes of Normandy, 
and already the story of Rosamond had given a 
romantic celebrity to the name. The first of the 
family, who settled in Westmoreland, built the 
greater part of Brougham Castle ; he was surprized 
in Hawarden Castle by the Welsh Prince David, and 
taken prisoner, being mortally wounded. His son 
and successor fell at Bannockburn. 

Roger Lord CHfford, who came next in succession, 
had the worse fortune, according to the Chroniclers, 
of being drawn and hanged at York, but in good 
company, and in no discreditable cause, the other 
persons who suffered at that time being John Lord 
Mowbray, and Sir Gosein d'Eeuill. There are few 

^ "Some back friends to this country," says Fuller, "will say that, 
though Westmoreland hath much of Eden (running clear through it,) 
yet hath it little of delight therein." 



THE CLIFFORDS II3 

old family trees, especially of the coronet-bearing 
kind, which have not a pendant from some of their 
branches : but though this Roger had done as 
much to deserve the honours of poKtical martyr- 
dom as any other bold baron of that rebelHous age, 
the Chroniclers are certainly mistaken in saying that 
he attained a consummation so devoutly to be depre- 
cated. A feeHng of humanity such as is seldom read 
of in civil wars, and especially in those times, saved 
him from execution, when he was taken prisoner with 
Lancaster and the rest of his confederates at Borough- 
bridge. He had received so many wounds in the 
battle, that he could not be brought before the judge 
for the summary trial, which would have sent him 
to the hurdle and the gallows. Being looked upon, 
therefore, as a dying man, he was respited from the 
course of law ; time enough elapsed, while he con- 
tinued in this state, for the heat of resentment to 
abate, and Edward of Caernarvon, who, though a 
weak and most misguided prince, was not a cruel 
one, spared his life ; — an act of mercy which was the 
more graceful, because Clifford had insulted the royal 
authority in a manner less likely to be forgiven than 
his braving it in arms. A pursuivant had served a 
writ upon him in the Barons' Chamber, and he made 
the man eat the wax wherewith the writ was signed, 
"in contempt, as it were, of the said king." 

He was the first Lord Clifford that was attainted 
of treason. His lands and honours were restored in 
the first year of Edward III., but he survived the 
restoration only a few weeks, dying in the flower of his 
age, unmarried; but leaving "some base children 
behind him, whom he had by a mean woman who was 
called Julian of the Bower, for whom he built a little 
house hard by Whinf ell, and called it JuHan's Bower, the 



114 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

lower foundation of which standeth, and is yet to be 
seen," said the compiler of the family records, an 
hundred and fifty years ago, "though all the walls 
be down long since. And it is thought that the love 
which this Roger bore to this Julian kept him from 
marrying any other woman." Poets, this story is 
for you ; the marriage of the brother who succeeded 
to his titles and estates contains something for the 
antiquaries. His wife, Isabella de Berkeley, was 
sister to Thomas Lord Berkeley, of Berkeley Castle, 
in which castle, two years after it had rung with 
"shrieks of death," when the tragedy of Edward II 
was brought to its dreadful catastrophe there, the 
marriage was performed. She had for her portion 
a thousand pounds and fifty marks, to be paid by 
three equal instalments in three years, and secured 
to her by recognizance, " toward the raising of which 
portion her brother levied aid of his freeholders." 
Her wedding apparel was "a gown of cloth of bruny 
Scarlett, or brown scarlett, with a cape furred with 
the best miniver. Lord Berkeley and his lady being, 
for the honour of the said bride, apparelled in the like 
habit. And the bride's saddle, which she had then 
for her horse, cost five pounds in London." 

This Robert Kved a country life, and "nothing is 
mentioned of him in the wars," except that he once 
accompanied an army into Scotland. It is however 
related of him, that when Edward Balliol was driven 
from Scotland, the exiled king was "right honourably 
received by him in Westmoreland, and entertained 
in his castles of Brougham, Appelby and Pendragon ;" 
in acknowledgement for which hospitahty Balliol, 
if he might at any time recover the kingdom of Scot- 
land out of his adversaries' hands, made him a grant 
of Douglas Dale, which had been granted to his 



THE CLIFFORDS I15 

grandfather who fell in Wales. The Hart's-horn 
tree in Whinfell park, well known in tradition, and in 
hunters' tales, owes its celebrity to this visit, though 
the tale ^ which belongs to it is, beyond all doubt, 
apocryphal. The horns were nailed up in the tree 
in honour of the royal guest who had seen the animal 
killed there ; and there they remained more than three 
centuries, "growing, as it were, naturally in the tree," 
till, in the year 1648, one of the branches was broken 
off by some of the army, and, ten years afterwards, 
the remainder was taken down by some mischievous 
people secretly in the night; "so now," says the 
Countess of Pembroke, noticing this act of mischief 
in her Diary, "there is no part thereof remaining, the 
tree itself being so decayed, and the bark of it so 
peeled off, that it cannot last long ; whereby we may 
see Time brings to forge tfulness many memorable 
things in this world, be they ever so carefully pre- 
served, for this tree with the Hart's horn in it was a 
thing of much note in these parts." And then, ac- 
cording to her custom of applying scripture on all 
occasions that any way touched her, she refers to the 
third chapter of Ecclesiastes. 

^ That "they ran the stag by a single greyhound out of Whinfel 
Park to Red Kirk in Scotland, and back again to this place, when, 
being both spent, the stag leaped over the pales, but died on the 
other side — and the greyhound, attempting to leap, fell, and died 
on the contrary side." In memory of this fact the stag's horns were 
nailed upon a tree just by, and, the dog being named Hercules, this 
rhyme was made upon them : 

Hercules killed Hart a-greese. 

And Hart a-greese killed Hercules. 
Nicolsson and Burn remark, when they tell the story, that a course 
to Nine Kirks, instead of into Scotland, might be far enough, from 
some parts of the park, for a greyhound to run. But the tale is 
of later invention than the Countess's time ; she simply says that 
the King hunted the stag to death, — and certainly he would not 
have hunted him into Scotland. 



Il6 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

Roger had remained unmarried, because his ilHcit 
connection with a woman of low birth had produced 
a true and faithful love. Robert Kved seventeen 
years with his wife, whose bridal magnificence was 
thought worthy of being described in the records ^ 
of the Berkeley family; and his high-born widow 
married again so soon after his decease, that the sec- 
ond husband, Sir Thomas de Musgrave, paid into the 
Exchequer a fine of £200, for the trespass which he 
had committed in marrying her; it being forbidden 
by the canon law, then much in use in England, to 
remarry intra annum luctus,'^ without a special dis- 
pensation from the Sovereign. His eldest son, at 
the age of sixteen, fought with the Black Prince, 
when he won his spurs at Cressy ; he died, as is sup- 
posed, in France, without issue, leaving a brother to 
succeed him. This brother, Roger Lord Clifford, 
"was accounted one of the wisest and gallantest men 
of all the Cliffords of his race, by the consent of those 
antiquaries who knew most of the story of England, 
and have seen most of the records and leger books 
thereof." He was often in the wars, both in France 
and in Scotland; he repaired the ancient castles 
which had been the seats of his forefathers; he left 
a greater estate in lands than most of them ; and he 
was the longest possessor of those lands of any before 
him, or after him, till the Shepherd Lord. It was his 
fortune, also, to be the first Lord Clifford of West- 
moreland and Skipton, that ever lived to be a grand- 
father. He obtained from Edward IH. two weekly 
markets and two fairs in the year for the town of 

1 "All which particulars are cited by Mr. Smith's book of 

the records of the Lord Berkeley, in written hand, which he faith- 
fully collected out of the records of that Castle, and out of the Tower 
of London." ^ Within the year of mourning. 



THE CLIFFORDS II 7 

Kirkby Stephen. His wisdom was shown in keeping 
himself free from troubles during those troublesome 
times at the latter end of King Edward III.'s reign, 
and in the beginning of King Richard II. 's. 

His eldest son, Thomas, was less prudent ; he was 
one of Richard II. 's loose favourites, and in conse- 
quence fell into such displeasure with the Parliament, 
that he was in the number of those persons who were 
banished from the Court, and proscribed from the 
King's service ; — a great grief to his father, who died 
presently after his disgrace. The son survived him 
little more than two years ; impatient of inaction, 
and probably with the hope, also, of redeeming his 
character in a holy war, he went to fight against the 
Pagans in what was then called Spruce, and was there 
slain,^ leaving an infant son. That son deserved and 
enjoyed the good opinion of Henry V., and held the 
office of Butler at the coronation of his Queen. He 
was bound by articles to carry over to the French wars 
two hundred men-at-arms, consisting of three knights, 
forty-seven esquires, and an hundred-and-fifty arch- 
ers ; one-third of them on foot, the rest horsemen ; 
the knights were to be allowed two shilhngs a day, 
the esquires one, the archers sixpence, CHfford him- 
self four shillings. In the flower of his age he was 
slain there, at the siege of Meaux, by a quarrel from 
a crossbow. Then ensued civil wars, in which the 
old Lord Clifford, so called ^ when only forty years 
of age, because he had a son who was in the field, 
fell at St. Alban's; and that son, to whom Shaks- 



^ His father-in-law, Lord Ross, crusading in a different direction, 
died the same year, on his return from the Holy Land, "in the city 
of Paphos, in the isle of Cyprus." 

^ To the mistake, into which this has misled Shakspeare, we are 
indebted for a beautiful passage : 



Il8 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

peare has given a worse renown than he ^deserves, at 
Ferrybridge. 

How often must that sweet strain of melancholy 
reflection, which Shakspeare has so beautifully 
expressed for Henry VI., have passed through the 
mind of the Shepherd Lord, in his humble state, when 
thinking of his ancestors, and comparing his own 
consciousness of perpetual danger ^ with the security 
of his low-born associates ! 

"O God ! methinks it were a happy life 
To be no better than a homely swain ; 



" Wast thou ordain'd, dear father, 
To lose thy youth in peace, and to achieve 
The silver livery of advised age ; 
And in thy reverence, and thy chair-days, thus 
To die in ruffian battle? " 

The old play, which Shakspeare follows, calls him 

"aged pillar of all Cumberland's true house," 

but has not the farther inaccuracy of representing him as having 
grown old in peace. This Lord Clifford was far from having past a 
peaceful youth. He had done "brave service in the wars in France, 
at the assault and taking of the strong town of Ponthoise, when and 
where he and his men were all clothed in white by reason of the snow, 
and in that manner surprised the town. He also valiantly defended 
the same town against the assaults then and there given by the 
French King Charles VII." 

^ Rutland was in his eighteenth year, and barbarous as it was to 
refuse him quarter, there is a wide difference between killing a youth 
of that age in the field, and butchering a boy of twelve years old. 
Hall has misled Shakspeare and the author of the old play here. 

'^ Cromwell had this feeling. "I can say in the presence of God," 
said he in one of his speeches, "in comparison of whom we are but 
poor creeping ants upon the earth, I would have been glad to have 
lived under my wood side, to have kept a flock of sheep, rather than 
have undertook such a government as this is ! " Mr. To well Rutt 
(to whom history is indebted for the publication of Burton's Journal) 
calls this "one of the Protector's favourite common-places." I do 
not doubt that Oliver Cromwell often felt as he then expressed him- 
self, and that the tears, which accompanied the expression, came 
from a deeper source than hypocrisy can reach. 



THE CLIFFORDS I19 

To sit upon a hill, as I do now, 

To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, 

Thereby to see the minutes how they run ; 

How many make the hour full complete. 

How many hours bring about the day, 

How many days will finish up the year, 

How many years a mortal man may live. 

When this is known, then to divide the times ; 

So many hours must I tend my flock ; 

So many hours must I take my rest; 

So many hours must I contemplate ; 

So many days my ewes have been with young ; 

So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean ; 

So many months ere I shaU shear the fleece ; 

So minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months and years, 

Pass'd over to the end they were created. 

Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave." 

"Sir Thomas More," CoUoquy XII. 



PHENOMENA OF THE LAKE COUNTRY 

1808. Oct. 30. What a morning ! hard frost, 
bright sunshine, and a wind not perceptible other- 
wise than by its keen coldness, bending the smoke 
of the newly kindled fires, which has risen high through 
the stillness, — and blending it with the mist which 
runs under the mountains, beginning at Thorn- 
thwate, till it comes round under Wallow and meets 
the smoke of the town : the fell summit shining above 
it in sunshine. 

1809. June 2. Snow upon all the hills and the 
vale of St. John's covered with it : a thing never 
before remembered. Within a fortnight grass which 
had then been buried beneath the snow was mown. 

Common-Place Book, IV, 538-539. 

ist Feb. 1814. I heard the ice thunders this 
morning. Edith and Herbert compared it to the 



I20 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

howling of wild beasts. It was neither like thunder 
nor the sound of the wind, but a long, moaning, mel- 
ancholy sound, rising and dying away, beyond meas- 
ure mornful : and to any one crossing the ice, inex- 
pressibly awful and appalhng. Every now and then 
came a crash, and a splash of waters. We staid half 
an hour hstening to it. The children were very 
much impressed. It was the more extraordinary, as 
there had been no thaw, and the night had been 
severe. It was between eight and nine o'clock. 

Common-Place Book, IV, 534. 

July, 1822. I was on the lake with Lightfoot, 
between the General's Island and St. Herbert's, and 
nearly midway between the east and west sides. The 
water was perfectly still, and not a breath of air to 
be felt. We were in fine weather, but on the eastern 
side a heavy shower was falling, within a quarter of 
a mile of us, and the sound which it made was louder 
than the loudest roaring of Lodore, so as to astonish 
us both. I thought that a burst had happened upon 
Walla Crag, and that the sound proceeded from the 
ravines bringing down their sudden torrents. But it 
was merely the rain falling on the lake when every- 
thing was still. J,. J TAT 
° Ibid., IV, 7. 

Sept. 28, 1824. At seven, the glass was at the 
freezing point, and the potatoes had been frost nipt 
during the night. The lake, covered with a thick 
cloud reaching about half way up Brandelow — the 
town half seen through a Hghter fog — the sky bright 
and blue. 

By the time I reached the road to the lake, the fog 
was half dissolved, throwing a hazy and yellowish 
light over Skiddaw and the vale of Keswick. From 



SCENES FROM THE LAKE COUNTRY 121 

Friar's Crag the appearance was singularly beauti- 
ful, for between that point and Stable Hill and Lord's 
Island, the water was covered with a thin, low, float- 
ing, and close fitting cloud, like a fleece. Walla 
Crag was in darkness, and the smoke from Stable 
Hill passed in a long current over a field where shocks 
of corn were standing, the field and the smoke in 
bright sunshine. Beyond Lord's Island, the lake 
was of a silvery appearance along the shore, and 
that appearance was extended across, but with di- 
minished splendour, the Hne passing above Ramp's 
Holm, and below St. Herbert's — when it met the 
haze. 

The rooks on St. Herbert's were in full chorus. 
What little air was stirring was a cold breath from the 
north. That air rippled the lake between Finkle 
Street and our shore, and where the sun shone upon 
the ripple through the trees of the walk, and through 
the haze, the broken reflection was so like the fleecy 
appearance of the fog from the crag, as for a moment 

to deceive me. r,., t^, 

Ibid., IV, S17. 

At the edge of the frozen lake, opposite to Lord's 
Island, the frost had formed little crystalline blos- 
soms on the ice wherever there was the point of a 
rush to form a nucleus. These frost flowers were 
about the size of the little blue flower with the orange 
eye, and exceedingly beautiful, bright as silver. 

Ibid., IV, 8. 

3 March, 1829. The lake perfectly still in a mild 
clear day ; but at once a motion began upon it between 
the Crag and Stable Hill, as if an infinite number of 
the smallest conceivable fish were lashing it with 
their tails. What could possibly occasion this, 



122 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

neither I, nor Bertha and Kate, who were with me, 
could discover or imagine. It abated gradually. 

Common-Place Book, IV, 8. 

I noticed a very pretty image by the side of a little 

and clear runlet, the large buttercups on its margin 

moved when there was no wind, rocked by the rapid 

motion of its stream. ,, ., ^,r o 

Ibid., IV, 8. 



THE DOCTOR 

ELUCIDATION FROM HENRY MORE AND DOCTOR WATTS. AN 
INCIDENTAL OPINION UPON HORACE WALPOLE. THE STREAM 
OF THOUGHT "FLOWETH AT ITS OWN SWEET WILL." PICTURES 
AND BOOKS. A SAYING OF MR. PITT'S CONCERNING WILBER- 
FORCE. THE AUTHOR EXPLAINS IN WHAT SENSE IT MIGHT BE 
SAID THAT HE SOMETIMES SHOOTS WITH A LONG BOW. 

Vorrei, disse il Signor Gas par o Pallavicino, che vol ragionassi 
un poco pm minutamente di questo, che non fate; che en vero vi 
tenete molto al generate, el quasi ci mostrate le cose per transito} 

Il Cortegiano. 

Henry More, in the Preface General to the col- 
lection of his philosophical writings, says to the 
reader, "if thy curiosity be forward to inquire what 
I have done in these new editions of my books, I am 
ready to inform thee that I have taken the same Hberty 
in this Intellectual Garden of my own planting, that 
men usually take in their natural ones ; which is, to 
set or pluck up, to transplant and inoculate, where 
and what they please. And therefore if I have 
rased out some things, (which yet are but very few) 
and transposed others, and interserted others, I hope 
I shall seem injurious to no man in ordering and 
cultivating this Philosophical Plantation of mine 
according to mine own humour and liking," 

Except as to the rasing out, what our great Pla- 
tonist has thus said for himself, may here be said for 

^ I wish, said the Lord Gasparo Pallavicino, that you would dis- 
course somewhat more minutely of this matter, for you are holding 
too much to the generahty, and are indicating the points as if casually. 

123 



124 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

me. " Many things," as the happy old lutanist, 
Thomas Mace, says, "are good, yea, very good; but 
yet upon after-consideration we have met with the 
comparative, which is better; yea, and after that, 
with the superlative (best of all), by adding to, or 
altering a httle, the same good things." 

During the years that this Opus has been in hand 
(and in head and heart also) nothing was ex- 
punged as if it had become obsolete because the per- 
sons therein alluded to had departed like shadows, 
or the subjects there touched on had grown out of 
date; but much was introduced from time to time 
where it fitted best. Allusions occur in relation to 
facts which are many years younger than the body 
of the chapter in which they have been grafted, thus 
rendering it impossible for any critic, however acute, 
to determine the date of any one chapter by its 
contents. 

What Watts has said of his own Treatise upon 
the Improvement of the Mind may therefore, with 
strict fidelity, be appHed to this book, which I trust, 
O gentle Reader, thou wilt regard as specially con- 
ducive to the improvement of thine. "The work was 
composed at different times, and by slow degrees. 
Now and then indeed it spread itself into branches 
and leaves, like a plant in April and advanced seven 
or eight pages in a week ; and sometimes it lay by 
without growth, like a vegetable in the winter, and 
did not increase half so much in the revolution of a 
year. As thoughts occurred to me in reading or medi- 
tation, or in my notices of the various appearances 
of things among mankind, they were thrown under 
appropriate heads, and were, by degrees, reduced 
to such a method as the subject would admit. The 
language and dress of these sentiments is such as the 



THE DOCTOR 1 25 

present temper of mind dictated, whether it were 
grave or pleasant, severe or smiling. And a book 
which has been twenty years in writing may be in- 
dulged in some variety of style and manner, though 
I hope there will not be found any great difference of 
sentiment." With little transposition Watts's words 
have been made to suit my purpose ; and when he 
afterwards speaks of *'so many lines altered, so many 
things interlined, and so many paragraphs and pages 
here and there inserted," the circumstances which 
he mentions as having deceived him in computing 
the extent of his work, set forth the embarrassment 
which the commentators will find in settHng the 
chronology of mine. 

The difficulty would not be obviated were I, like 
Horace Walpole, — (though Heaven knows for no 
such motives as influenced that posthumous Hbeller,) 
— to leave a box containing the holograph manu- 
script of this Opus in safe custody, with an injunction 
that the seals should not be broken till the year of 
our Lord, 2000. Nothing more than what has been 
here stated would appear in that inestimable manu- 
script. Whether I shall leave is as an heir-loom 
in my family, or have it deposited either in the public 
Hbrary of my Alma Mater, or that of my own Col- 
lege, or bequeath it as a last mark of affection to the 
town of Doncaster, concerns not the present reader. 
Nor does it concern him to know whether the till- 
then-undiscoverable name of the author will be dis- 
closed at the opening of the seals. An adequate 
motive for placing the manuscript in safe custody is, 
that a standard would thus be secured for posterity 
whereby the always accumulating errors of the press 
might be corrected. For modern printers make more 
and greater blunders than the copyists of old. 



126 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

In any of those works which posterity will not be 
"willing to let perish," how greatly would the interest 
be enhanced, if the whole history of its rise and prog- 
ress were known, and amid what circumstances, and 
with what views, and in what state of mind, certain 
parts were composed. Sir Walter, than whom no man 
ever took more accurate measure of the public taste, 
knew this well ; and posterity will always be grateful 
to him for having employed his declining years in 
communicating so much of the history of those works 
which obtained a wider and more rapid celebrity 
than any that ever preceded them, and perhaps than 
any that ever may follow them. 

An author of the last generation, (I cannot call to 
mind who), treated such an opinion with contempt, 
saying in his preface that "there his work was, and 
that as the PubHc were concerned with it only as it 
appeared before them, he should say nothing that 
would recal the blandishments of its childhood : " 
whether the book was one of which the maturity 
might just as well be forgotten as the nonage, I do 
not remember. But he must be little versed in bib- 
liology who has not learnt that such reminiscences are 
not more agreeable to an author himself, than they 
are to his readers, (if he obtain any,) in after times ; 
for every trifle that relates to the history of a favourite 
author, and of his works, then becomes precious. 

Far be it from me to despise the relic-mongers of 
literature, or to condemn them, except when they 
bring to light things which ought to have been buried 
with the dead ; like the Dumfries craniologists, who, 
when the grave of Burns was opened to receive the 
corpse of his wife, took that opportunity of abstract- 
ing the poet's skull that they might make a cast from 
it ! Had these men forgotten the malediction which 



THE DOCTOR 1 27 

Shakespeare utters from his monument? And 
had they never read what Wordsworth says to such 
men in his Poet's epitaph — 

Art thou one all eyes, 
Philosopher ! a fingering slave, 
One that would peep and botanize 
Upon his mother's grave ? 

Wrapt closely in thy sensual fleece, 
turn aside, — and take, I pray, 
That he below may rest in peace, 
Thy pin-point of a soul away ! 

O for an hour of Burns for these men's sake ! Were 
there a Witch of Endor in Scotland it would be an 
act of comparative piety in her to bring up his spirit ; 
to stigmatize them in verses that would burn for 
ever would be a gratification for which he might 
think it worth while to be thus brought again upon 
earth. 

But to the harmless relic-mongers we owe much; 
much to the Thomas Hearnes and John Nichols, the 
Isaac Reids, and the Malones, the Haslewoods and 
Sir Egertons. Individually, I owe them much, and 
willingly take this opportunity of acknowledging 
the obligation. And let no one suppose that Sir 
Egerton is disparaged by being thus classed among 
the pioneers of literature. It is no disparagement 
for any man of letters, however great his endowments, 
and however extensive his erudition, to take part in 
those patient and humble labours by which honour 
is rendered to his predecessors, and information 
preserved for those who come after him. 

But in every original work which lives and de- 
serves to live, there must have been some charms 
which no editorial diligence can preserve, no critical 
sagacity recover. The pictures of the old masters 



128 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

suffer much when removed from the places for which, 
(and in which, many of them,) they were painted. It 
may happen that one which has been conveyed from 
a Spanish palace or monastery to the collection of 
Marshal Soult, or any other Plunder-Master-General 
in Napoleon's armies, and have past from thence, 
— honestly as regards the purchaser, — to the hands 
of an English owner, may be hung at the same eleva- 
tion as in its proper place, and in the same light. Still 
it loses much. The accompaniments are all of a 
different character; the air and odour of the place 
are different. There is not here the locality that 
consecrated it, — no longer the religio loci. Wealth 
cannot purchase these ; power may violate and de- 
stroy, but it cannot transplant them. The picture 
in its new situation is seen with a different feeling, 
by those who have any true feeling for such things. 

Literary works of imagination, fancy, or feeling, 
are Uable to no injury of this kind ; but in common 
with pictures they suffer a partial deterioration in 
even a short lapse of time. In such works as in pic- 
tures, there are often passages which once possessed 
a peculiar interest, personal and local, subordinate 
to the general interest. The painter introduced 
into an historical piece the portrait of his mistress, 
his wife, his child, his dog, his friend, or his faithful 
servant. The picture is not, as a work of art, the 
worse where these persons were not known, or when 
they are forgotten : but there was once a time when 
it excited on this account in very many beholders a 
peculiar delight which it can never more impart. 

So it is with certain books; and though there is 
perhaps little to regret in any thing that becomes ob- 
solete, an author may be allowed to sigh over what he 
feels and knows to be evanescent. 



THE DOCTOR 129 

Mr. Pitt used to say of Wilberforce that he was not 
so single minded in his speeches as might have been 
expected from the sincerity of his character, and as he 
would have been if he had been less dependent upon 
popular support. Those who knew him, and how he 
was connected, he said, could perceive that some things 
in his best speeches were intended to tell in such and 
such quarters, — upon Benjamin Sleek in one place, 
Isaac Drab in another, and Nehemiah Wilyman in a 
third. — Well would it be if no man ever looked 
askant with worse motives ! 

Observe, Reader, that I call him simply Wilber- 
force, because any common prefix would seem to 
disparage that name, especially if used by one who 
regarded him with admiration ; and with respect, 
which is better than admiration, because it can be 
felt for those only whose virtues entitle them to it ; 
and with kindliness, which is better than both, be- 
cause it is called forth by those kindly qualities that 
are worth more than any talents, and without which 
a man, though he may be both great and good, never 
can be amiable. No one was ever blest with a larger 
portion of those gifts and graces which make up the 
measure of an amiable and happy man. 

It will not be thought then that I have repeated 
with any disrespectful intention what was said of 
Wilberforce by Mr. Pitt. The observation was 
brought to mind while I was thinking how many 
passages in these volumes were composed with a 
double intention, one for the public and for posterity, 
the other private and personal, written with special 
pleasure on my part, speciali gratia, for the sake of 
certain individuals. Some of these, which are cal- 
culated for the meridian of Doncaster, the commen- 
tators may possibly, if they make due research, dis- 



I30 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

cover ; but there are others which no ingenuity can 
detect. Their quintessence exhales when the pri- 
vate, which was in these cases the primary intention 
has been fulfilled. Yet the consciousness of the emo- 
tions which those passages will excite, the recollec- 
tions they will awaken, the surprize and the smile 
with which they will be received, — yea and the 
melancholy gratification, — even to tears, — which 
they will impart, has been one and not the least of 
the many pleasures which I have experienced while 
employed upon this work. 

IIoAAa fioi vir ayK&- 
-vos oj/ce'a /SeXr] 
*Ev8ov ivTL «^apeTpas 
^wvavra avveToXdiv.^ 

But while thus declaring that these volumes con- 
tain much covert intention of this kind, I utterly dis- 
claim all covert malevolence. My roving shafts are 
more harmless even than bird bolts, and can hurt 
none on whom they fall. The arrows with which 
I take aim carry tokens of remembrance and love, 
and may be likened to those by which intelligence 
has been conveyed into besieged places. Of such 
it is that I have been speaking. Others, indeed, I 
have in the quiver which are pointed and barbed. 

ifiol fxkv o)v M-olaa Kapreput- 
-TttTOv /Se'Aos dAxa Tpi<f>€L.^ 

When one of these is let fly, (with sure aim and never 
without just cause), it has its address written on the 
shaft at full length, like that which Aster directed 
from the walls of Methone to Philip's right eye. 

^ Under my arm I bear many swift arrows in my quiver carrying 
meaning to the wise. Pindar, O. 2, 152. 

* But the Muse keeps for me a shaft stronger in might. 

Pindar, O. i, 179-80. 



THE DOCTOR 13 1 

Or c^est assez 5' estre esgare de son grand chemin: 
fy retourne et le bats, et le trace comme devant} 

Interchapter X. 



BIRTH AND PARENTAGE OF DOCTOR DOVE, WITH THE DESCRIPTION 
OF A yeoman's HOUSE IN THE WEST RIDING OF YORKSHIRE A 
HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 

Non possidentem multa vocaveris 
Rede beatum; rectius occupat 
Nomen beati, qui Deorum 
Muneribus sapienter uti 
Duramque callet pauperiem pati, 
Pejusque letho flagitium timet?' 

Horace L. 4, Od. 9. 

Daniel, the son of Daniel Dove and of Dinah his 
wife, was born near Ingleton in the West Riding of 
Yorkshire, on Monday the twenty-second of April, 
old style, 1723, nine minutes and three seconds 
after three in the afternoon ; on which day Mar- 
riage came in and Mercury was with the Moon; 
and the aspects were n i? ? : a week earlier, it would 
have been a glorious Trine of the Sun and Jupiter; 
— circumstances which were all duly noted in the 
blank leaf of the family Bible. 

Daniel, the father, was one of a race of men who 
unhappily are now almost extinct. He lived upon 
an estate of six and twenty acres which his fathers 
had possessed before him, all Doves and Daniels, in 
uninterrupted succession from time immemorial, 
farther than registers or title deeds could ascend. 

^ Enough now of wandering from the high road ; I return to it 
and tread it, and follow it as before. Brantome. 

^ Not him may you truly call happy who possesses much wealth ; 
more truly does he claim the title to happiness who knows how to 
enjoy wisely the rewards of the Gods and to endure harsh poverty, 
and who fears shame worse than death. 



132 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

The little church, called Chapel le Dale, stands about 
a bow-shot from the family house. There they had 
all been carried to the font ; there they had each led 
his bride to the altar ; and thither they had, each in 
his turn, been borne upon the shoulders of their 
friends and neighbours. Earth to earth they had 
been consigned there for so many generations, that 
half of the soil of the churchyard consisted of their 
remains. A hermit who might wish his grave to be 
as quiet as his cell, could imagine no fitter resting 
place. On three sides there was an irregular low stone 
wall, rather to mark the limits of the sacred ground, 
than to inclose it; on the fourth it was bounded by 
the brook whose waters proceed by a subterraneous 
channel from Wethercote cave. Two or three alders 
and rowan trees hung over the brook, and shed their 
leaves and seeds into the stream. Some bushy 
hazels grew at intervals along the lines of the wall ; 
and a few ash trees, as the winds had sown them. 
To the east and west some fields adjoined it, in that 
state of half cultivation which gives a human char- 
acter to soHtude : to the south, on the other side 
the brook, the common with its limestone rocks peer- 
ing every where above ground, extended to the foot 
of Ingleborough. A craggy hill, feathered with birch, 
sheltered it from the north. 

The turf was as soft and fine as that of the adjoin- 
ing hills ; it was seldom broken, so scanty was the 
population to which it was appropriated ; scarcely 
a thistle or a nettle deformed it, and the few tomb- 
stones which had been placed there were now them- 
selves half buried. The sheep came over the wall 
when they listed, and sometimes took shelter in the 
porch from the storm. Their voices, and the cry of 
the kite, wheeling above, were the only sounds which 



THE DOCTOR 133 

were heard there, except when the single bell which 
hung in its niche over the entrance tinkled for service 
on the Sabbath day, or with a slower tongue gave 
notice that one of the children of the soil was return- 
ing to the earth from which he sprung. 

The house of the Doves was to the east of the 
church, under the same hill, and with the same brook 
in front; and the intervening fields belonged to the 
family. It was a low house, having before it a little 
garden of that size and character which showed that 
the inhabitants could afford to bestow a thought 
upon something more than mere bodily wants. You 
entered between two yew trees dipt to the fashion 
of two pawns. There were hollyhocks and sun- 
flowers displaying themselves above the wall ; roses 
and sweet peas under the windows, and the ever- 
lasting pea climbing the porch. Over the door was 
a stone with these letters. 

D 
D -hM 

A.D. 

1608. 

The A. was in the Saxon character. The rest of 
the garden lay behind the house, partly on the slope 
of the hill. It had a hedge of gooseberry-bushes, a 
few apple-trees, pot-herbs in abundance, onions, cab- 
bages, turnips and carrots ; potatoes had hardly yet 
found their way into these remote parts : and in a 
sheltered spot under the crag, open to the south, 
were six bee-hives which made the family perfectly 
independent of West India produce. Tea was in 
those days as little known as potatoes, and for all 
other things honey supplied the place of sugar. 

The house consisted of seven rooms, the dairy 
and cellar included, which were both upon the 



134 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

ground floor. As you entered the kitchen there was 
on the right one of those open chimneys which afford 
more comfort in a winter's evening than the finest 
register stove ; in front of the chimney stood a wooden 
bee-hive chair, and on each side was a. long oak seat 
with a back to it, the seats serving as chests in which 
the oaten bread was kept. They were of the darkest 
brown, and well polished by constant use. On the 
back of each were the same initials as those over 
the door, with the date 1610. The great oak table, 
and the chest in the best kitchen which held the 
house-linen, bore the same date. The chimney was 
well hung with bacon, the rack which covered half 
the ceiling bore equal marks of plenty ; mutton hams 
were suspended from other parts of the ceiling ; and 
there was an odour of cheese from the adjoining dairy, 
which the turf fire, though perpetual as that of the 
Magi, or of the Vestal Virgins, did not overpower. 
A few pewter dishes were ranged above the trenchers, 
opposite the door, on a conspicuous shelf. The other 
treasures of the family were in an open triangular 
cupboard, fixed in one of the corners of the best 
kitchen, half way from the floor, and touching the 
ceiling. They consisted of a silver saucepan, a silver 
goblet, and four apostle spoons. Here also King 
Charles's Golden Rules were pasted against the wall, 
and a large print of Daniel in the Lion's Den. The 
Lions were bedaubed with yellow, aijd the Prophet 
was bedaubed with blue, with a red patch upon 
each of his cheeks : if he had been hke his picture he 
might have frightened the Lions ; but happily there 
were no "judges" in the family, and it had been 
bought for its name's sake. The other print which 
ornamented the room had been purchased from a 
like feeling, though the cause was not so immediately 



THE DOCTOR 135 

apparent. It represented a Ship in full sail, with 
Joseph, and the Virgin Mary, and the Infant on board, 
and a Dove flying behind as if to fill the sails with the 
motion of its wings. Six black chairs were ranged 
along the wall, where they were seldom disturbed from 
their array. They had been purchased by Daniel 
the grandfather upon his marriage, and were the most 
costly purchase that had ever been made in the 
family ; for the goblet was a legacy. The backs were 
higher than the head of the tallest man when seated ; 
the seats flat and shallow, set in a round frame, un- 
accommodating in their material, more unaccommo- 
dating in shape ; the backs also were of wood rising 
straight up, and ornamented with balls and lozenges 
and embossments ; and the legs and cross bars were 
adorned in the same taste. Over the chimney were 
two Peacocks' feathers, some of the dry silky pods of 
the honesty flower, and one of those large "sinuous 
shells" so finely thus described by Landor: — 

Of pearly hue 
Within, and they that lustre have imbib'd 
In the sun's palace porch ; where, when unyok'd, 
His chariot wheel stands midway in the wave. 
Shake one, and it awakens ; then apply 
Its polish'd lips to your attentive ear, 
And it remembers its august abodes, 
And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there. 

There was also a head of Indian corn there, and a 
back scratcher, of which the hand was ivory and the 
handle black. This had been a present of Daniel the 
grandfather to his wife. The three apartments above 
served equally for store-rooms and bed-chambers. 
William Dove the brother slept in one, and Agatha 
the maid, or Haggy as she was called, in another. 

Chapter IV. 



136 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 



A COLLECTION OF BOOKS NONE OF WHICH ARE INCLUDED AMONGST 
THE PUBLICATIONS OF ANY SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION 
OF KNOWLEDGE RELIGIOUS OR PROFANE. — HAPPINESS IN 
HUMBLE LIFE. 

Felix ille animi, divisque simillimus ipsis. 
Quern non mordaci resplendens gloria fuco 
Solicitat, non fastosi mala gaudia luxus, 
Sed iacitos sinit ire dies, et paupere cultu 
Exigit innocuae tranquilla silentia vitae} 

POLITIAN. 

Happily for Daniel, he lived before the age of 
Magazines, Reviews, Cyclopeedias, Elegant Extracts 
and Literary Newspapers, so that he gathered the fruit 
of knowledge for himself, instead of receiving it from 
the dirty fingers of a retail vender. His books were 
few in number, but they were all weighty either in 
matter or in size. They consisted of the Morte 
d' Arthur in the fine black-letter edition of Copeland ; 
Plutarch's Morals and Pliny's Natural History, 
two goodly fohos, full as an egg of meat, and both 
translated by that old worthy Philemon, who for the 
service which he rendered to his contemporaries and 
to his countrymen deserves to be called the best of the 
Hollands, without disparaging either the Lord or the 
Doctor of that appellation. The whole works of 
Joshua Sylvester (whose name, let me tell thee reader 
in passing, was accented upon the first syllable by his 
contemporaries, not as now upon the second) ; — 
Jean Petit's History of the Netherlands, translated 
and continued by Edward Grimeston, another worthy 

^ Blessed is he in spirit and most like unto the gods themselves 
whom glory glittering with sharp deceit does not allure nor the false 
joys of wanton luxury, but who allows the days to proceed noiselessly 
and, unhampered by refinement, lives out the tranquil peace of an 
innocent life. 



THE DOCTOR 137 

of the Philemon order; Sir Kenelm Digby's Dis- 
courses ; Stowe's Chronicle ; Joshua Barnes's Life 
of Edward III.; "Ripley Revived by Eirenaeus 
Philalethes, an Enghshman styling himself Citizen 
of the World," with its mysterious frontispiece rep- 
resenting the Domus Natures, to which Nil deest, 
nisi clavis: the Pilgrim's Progress: two volumes of 
Ozell's translation of Rabelais ; Latimer's Sermons ; 
and the last volume of Fox's Martyrs, which latter 
book had been brought him by his wife. The Pil- 
grim's Progress was a godmother's present to his 
son : the odd volumes of Rabelais he had picked up 
at Kendal, at a sale, in a lot with Ripley Revived and 
Plutarch's Morals : the others he had inherited. 

Daniel had looked into all these books, read most 
of them, and beheved all that he read, except Rabe- 
lais, which he could not tell what to make of. He 
was not, however, one of those persons who com- 
placently suppose every thing to be nonsense, which 
they do not perfectly comprehend, or flatter themselves 
that they do. His simple heart judged of books by 
what they ought to be, little knowing what they are. 
It never occurred to him that any thing would be 
printed which was not worth printing, any thing 
which did not convey either reasonable dehght or 
useful instruction : and he was no more disposed to 
doubt the truth of what he read, than to question the 
veracity of his neighbour, or any one who had no 
interest in deceiving him. A book carried with it 
to him authority in its very aspect. The Morte 
d'Arthur therefore he received for authentic history, 
just as he did the painful chronicle of honest John 
Stowe, and the Barnesian labours of Joshua the self- 
satisfied : there was nothing in it indeed which 
stirred his English blood like the battles of Cressy 



138 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

and Poictiers and Najara ; yet on the whole he pre- 
ferred it to Barnes's story, believed in Sir Tor, Sir 
Tristram, Sir Lancelot and Sir Lamorack as entirely 
as in Sir John Chandos, the Captal de Buche and the 
Black Prince, and liked them better. 

Latimer and Du Bartas he used sometimes to read 
aloud on Sundays; and if the departed take cog- 
nizance of what passes on earth, and poets derive any 
satisfaction from that posthumous applause which is 
generally the only reward of those who deserve it, 
Sylvester might have found some compensation for 
the undeserved neglect into which his works had 
sunk, by the full and devout delight which his rat- 
tling rhymes and quaint collocations afforded to this 
reader. The silver-tongued Sylvester, however, was 
reserved for a Sabbath book ; as a week-day author 
Daniel preferred Pliny, for the same reason that 
bread and cheese, or a rasher of hung mutton, con- 
tented his palate better than a syllabub. He fre- 
quently regretted that so knowing a writer had never 
seen or heard of Wethercote and Yordas caves ; the 
ebbing and flowing spring at Giggleswick, Malham 
Cove, and Gordale Scar, that he might have de- 
scribed them among the wonders of the world. 
Omne ignotum pro magnifico is a maxim which will 
not in all cases hold good. There are things which 
we do not undervalue because we are famihar with 
them, but which are admired the more the more 
thoroughly they are known and understood ; it is 
thus with the grand objects of nature and the finest 
works of art, — with whatsoever is truly great and 
excellent. Daniel was not deficient in imagination ; 
but no description of places which he had never seen, 
however exaggerated (as such things always are) 
impressed him so strongly as these objects in his 



THE DOCTOR 139 

own neighbourhood, which he had known from child- 
hood. Three or four times in his Hfe it had happened 
that strangers with a curiosity as uncommon in that 
age as it is general in this, came from afar to visit 
these wonders of the West Riding, and Daniel accom- 
panied them with a delight such as he never experi- 
enced on any other occasion. 

But the Author in whom he delighted most was 
Plutarch, of whose works he was lucky enough to 
possess the worthier half : if the other had perished 
Plutarch would not have been a popular writer, but 
he would have held a higher place in the estimation 
of the judicious. Daniel could have posed a candi- 
date for university honours, and perhaps the examiner 
too, with some of the odd learning which he had stored 
up in his memory from these great repositories of 
ancient knowledge. Refusing all reward for such 
services, the strangers to whom he officiated as a 
guide, though they perceived that he was an ex- 
traordinary person, were little aware how much infor- 
mation he had acquired, and of how strange a kind. 
His talk with them did not go beyond the subjects 
which the scenes they came to visit naturally sug- 
gested, and they wondered more at the questions he 
asked, than at any thing which he advanced himself. 
For his disposition was naturally shy, and that which 
had been bashfulness in youth assumed the appear- 
ance of reserve as he advanced in Ufe; for having 
none to communicate with upon his favourite studies, 
he lived in an intellectual world of his own, a mental 
sohtude as complete as that of Alexander Selkirk or 
Robinson Crusoe. Even to the Curate his conver- 
sation, if he had touched upon his books, would have 
been heathen Greek ; and to speak the truth plainly, 
without knowing a letter of that language, he knew 



I40 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

more about the Greeks, than nine-tenths of the clergy 
at that time, including all the dissenters, and than 
nine-tenths of the schoolmasters also. 

Our good Daniel had none of that confidence which 
so usually and so unpleasantly characterizes self- 
taught men. In fact he was by no means aware of 
the extent of his acquirements, all that he knew in 
this kind having been acquired for amusement not 
for use. He had never attempted to teach him- 
self any thing. These books had lain in his way in 
boyhood, or fallen in it afterwards, and the perusal 
of them, intently as it was followed, was always ac- 
counted by him to be nothing more than recreation. 
None of his daily business had ever been neglected 
for it ; he cultivated his fields and his garden, re- 
paired his walls, looked to the stable, tended his 
cows and salved his sheep, as diligently and as con- 
tentedly as if he had possessed neither capacity nor 
inclination for any higher employments. Yet Daniel 
was one of those men, who, if disposition and aptitude 
were not overruled by circumstances, would have 
grown pale with study, instead of being bronzed and 
hardened by sun and wind and rain. There were in 
him undeveloped talents which might have raised 
him to distinction as an antiquary, a virtuoso of the 
Royal Society, a poet, or a theologian, to whichever 
course the bias in his ball of fortune had inclined. 
But he had not a particle of envy in his composition. 
He thought indeed that if he had had grammar 
learning in his youth like the curate, he would have 
made more use of it ; but there was nothing either 
of the sourness or bitterness (call it which you please) 
of repining in this natural reflection. 

Never indeed was any man more contented with 
doing his duty in that state of life to which it had 



THE DOCTOR 14 1 

pleased God to call him. And well he might be so, 
for no man ever passed through the world with less 
to disquiet or to sour him. Bred up in habits which 
secured the continuance of that humble but sure 
independence to which he was born, he had never 
known what it was to be anxious for the future. 
At the age of twenty-five he had brought home a 
wife, the daughter of a Httle landholder like himself, 
with fifteen pounds for her portion : and the true- 
love of his youth proved to him a faithful helpmate 
in those years when the dream of life is over, and we 
live in its realities. If at any time there had been 
some alloy in his happiness, it was when there ap- 
peared reason to suppose that in him his family would 
be extinct ; for though no man knows what parental 
feelings are till he has experienced them, and Daniel 
therefore knew not the whole value of that which he 
had never enjoyed, the desire of progeny is natural 
to the heart of man ; and though Daniel had neither 
large estates, nor an illustrious name to transmit, it 
was an unwelcome thought that the httle portion of 
the earth which had belonged to his fathers time out 
of mind, should pass into the possession of some 
stranger, who would tread on their graves and his 
own without any regard to the dust that lay beneath. 
That uneasy apprehension was removed after he had 
been married fifteen years, when to the great joy of 
both parents, because they had long ceased to enter- 
tain any hope of such an event, their wishes were 
fulfilled in the birth of a son. This their only child 
was healthy, apt and docile, to all appearance as 
happily disposed in mind and body as a father's 
heart could wish. If they had fine weather for 
winning their hay or shearing their corn, they thanked 
God for it; if the season proved unfavourable, the 



142 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

labour was only a little the more and the crop a little 
the worse. Their stations secured them from want, 
and they had no wish beyond it. What more had 
Daniel to desire? 

The following passage in the divine Du Bartas he 
used to read with peculiar satisfaction, applying it 
to himself : — 

thrice, thrice happy he, who shuns the cares 
Of city troubles, and of state-aflfairs ; 
And, serving Ceres, tills with his own team, 
His own free land, left by his friends to him ! 

Never pale Envy's poisony heads do hiss 
To gnaw his heart : nor Vulture Avarice : 
His fields' bounds, bound his thoughts : he never sups 
For nectar, poison mixed in silver cups ; 
Neither in golden platters doth he lick 
For sweet ambrosia deadly arsenic : 
His hand's his bowl (better than plate or glass) 
The silver brook his sweetest hippocrass : 
Mnk cheese and fruit, (fruits of his own endeavour) 
Drest without dressing, hath he ready ever. 

False counsellors (concealers of the law) 
Turncoat attorneys that with both hands draw ; 
Sly pettifoggers, wranglers at the bar. 
Proud purse-leeches, harpies of Westminster 
With feigned-chiding, and foul jarring noise, 
Break not his brain, nor interrupt his joys ; 
But cheerful birds chirping him sweet good-morrows 
With nature's music do beguile his sorrows ; 
Teaching the fragrant forests day by day 
The diapason of their heavenly lay. 

His wandering vessel, reeling to and fro 
On th' ireful ocean (as the winds do blow) 
With sudden tempest is not overwhurled, 
To seek his sad death in another world : 
But leading aU his life at home in peace, 
Always in sight of his own smoke, no seas 



THE DOCTOR 143 

No other seas he knows, no other torrent, 
Than that which waters with its silver current 
His native meadows : and that very earth 
Shall give him burial which first gave him birth. 

To summon timely sleep, he doth not need 
iEthiop's cold rush, nor drowsy poppy-seed ; 
Nor keep in consort (as Mecaenas did) 
Luxurious Villains — (Viols I should have said) ; 
But on green carpets thrum'd with mossy bever, 
Fringing the round skirts of his winding river. 
The stream's mild murmur, as it gently gushes, 
His healthy limbs in quiet slumber hushes. 

Drum fife and trumpet, with their loud alarms, 
Make him not start out of his sleep, to arms ; 
Nor dear respect of some great General, 
Him from his bed unto the block doth call. 
The crested cock sings " Himt-is-up" to him. 
Limits his rest, and makes him stir betime. 
To walk the mountains and the flow'ry meads 
Impearl'd with tears which great Aurora sheds. 

Never gross air poisoned in stinking streets, 
To choke his spirit, his tender nostril meets ; 
But th' open sky where at full breath he lives, 
Still keeps him sound, and still new stomach gives. 
And Death, dread Serjeant of the Eternal Judge, 
Comes very late to his sole-seated lodge. 

Chapter VI. 



RUSTIC PHILOSOPHY. AN EXPERIMENT UPON MOONSHINE 

Quien comienza en jiiventad 
A bien obrar, 
Serial es de no errar 
En senetud} 

Proverbios del Marques de Santillana. 

^ When one begins by working well in his youth, it is a sign that 
he will not go wrong in old age. 



144 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

It is not, however, for man to rest in absolute 
contentment. He is born to hopes and aspirations 
as the sparks fly upward, unless he has brutified his 
nature and quenched the spirit of immortahty which 
is his portion. Having nothing to desire for himself, 
Daniel's ambition had taken a natural direction and 
fixed upon his son. He was resolved that the boy 
should be made a scholar; not with the prospect of 
advancing him in the world, but in the hope that he 
might become a philosopher, and take as much delight 
in the books which he would inherit as his father had 
done before him. Riches and rank and power ap- 
peared in his judgment to be nothing when compared 
to philosophy; and herein he was as true a philoso- 
pher as if he had studied in the Porch, or walked the 
groves of Academus. 

It was not however for this, — for he was as little 
given to talk of his opinions as to display his reading, 
— but for his retired habits, and general character, 
and some odd practices into which his books had 
led him, that he was commonly called Flossofer Daniel 
by his neighbours. The appellation was not affixed 
in derision, but respectfully and as his due ; for he 
bore his faculties too meekly ever to excite an envious 
or an ill-natured feeling in any one. Rural Flossofers 
were not uncommon in those days, though in the prog- 
ress of society they have disappeared like Crokers, 
Bowyers, Lorimers, Armourers, Running Footmen, 
and other descriptions of men whose occupations are 
gone by. But they were of a different order from our 
Daniel. They were usually Philomaths, Students in 
Astrology, or the Coelestial Science, and not unfre- 
quently Empirics or downright Quacks. Between 
twenty and thirty almanacs used to be published 
every year by men of this description, some of them 



THE DOCTOR 145 

versed enough in mathematics to have done honour 
to Cambridge, had the fates allowed ; and others 
such proficients in roguery, that they would have 
done equal honour to the whipping-post. 

A man of a different stamp from either came in 
declining life to settle at Ingleton in the humble 
capacity of schoolmaster, a Httle before young Daniel 
was capable of more instruction than could be given 
him at home. Richard Guy was his name ; he is the 
person to whom the lovers of old rhyme are indebted 
for the preservation of the old poem of Flodden Field, 
which he transcribed from an ancient manuscript, 
and which was printed from his transcript by Thomas 
Gent of York. In his way through the world, which 
had not been along the King's high Dunstable road, 
Guy had picked up a competent share of Latin, a Httle 
Greek, some practical knowledge of physic, and more 
of its theory ; astrology enough to cast a nativity, 
and more acquaintance with alchemy than has often 
been possessed by one who never burnt his fingers in 
its processes. These acquirements were grafted on a 
disposition as obliging as it was easy ; and he was 
beholden to nature for an understanding so clear and 
quick that it might have raised him to some distinc- 
tion in the world if he had not been under the influ- 
ence of an imagination at once lively and credulous. 
Five and fifty years had taught him none of the world's 
wisdom ; they had sobered his mind without maturing 
it ; but he had a wise heart, and the wisdom of the 
heart is worth all other wisdom. 

Daniel was too far advanced in life to fall in friend- 
ship ; he felt a certain degree of attractiveness in 
this person's company ; there was, however, so much 
of what may better be called reticence than reserve 
in his own quiet habitual manners, that it would 



146 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

have been long before their acquaintance ripened into 
any thing like intimacy, if an accidental circumstance 
had not brought out the latent sympathy which on 
both sides had till then rather been apprehended than 
understood. They were walking together one day 
when young Daniel, who was then in his sixth year, 
looking up in his father's face, proposed this ques- 
tion : "Will it be any harm, Father, if I steal five 
beans when next I go into Jonathan Dowthwaites, 
if I can do it without any one's seeing me?" 

"And what wouldst thou steal beans for?" was 
the reply, "when any body would give them to thee, 
and when thou knowest there are plenty at home?" 

"But it won't do to have them given, Father," 
the boy replied. "They are to charm away my 
warts. Uncle William says I must steal five beans, 
a bean for every wart, and tie them carefully up in 
paper, and carry them to a place where two roads 
cross, and then drop them, and walk away without 
ever once looking behind me. And then the warts 
will go away from me, and come upon the hands of 
the person that picks up the beans." 

"Nay, boy," the Father made answer; "that 
charm was never taught by a white witch ! If thy 
warts are a trouble to thee, they would be a trouble to 
any one else ; and to get rid of an evil from ourselves, 
Daniel, by bringing it upon another, is against our 
duty to our neighbour. Have nothing to do with a 
charm like that!" 

"May I steal a piece of raw beef, then," rejoined 
the boy, " and rub the warts with it and bury it? 
For Uncle says that will do, and as the beef rots, so 
the warts will waste away." 

"Daniel," said the Father, "those can be no law- 
ful charms that begin with steaHng ; I could tell thee 



THE DOCTOR 147 

how to cure thy warts in a better manner. There 
is an infalHble way, which is by washing the hands in 
moonshine, but then the moonshine must be caught 
in a bright silver basin. You wash and wash in the 
basin, and a cold moisture will be felt upon the hands, 
proceeding from the cold and moist rays of the 
moon." 

"But what shall we do for a silver basin?" said 
little Daniel. 

The Father answered, "a pewter dish might be 
tried if it were made very bright ; but it is not deep 
enough. The brass kettle perhaps might do better." 

"Nay," said Guy, who had now begun to attend 
with some interest, "the shape of a kettle is not suit- 
able. It should be a concave vessel, so as to concen- 
trate the rays. Joshua Wilson I dare say would lend 
his brass basin, which he can very well spare at the 
hour you want it, because nobody comes to be shaved 
by moonlight. The moon rises early enough to 
serve at this time. If you come in this evening at 
six o'clock I will speak to Joshua in the mean time, 
and have the basin as bright and shining as a good 
scouring can make it. The experiment is curious and 
I should like to see it tried. Where, Daniel, didst 
thou learn it?" "I read it," replied Daniel, "in 
Sir Kenelm Digby's Discourses, and he says it never 
fails." 

Accordingly the parties met at the appointed 
hour. Mambrino's helmet, when new from the 
armourer's, or when furbished for a tournament, was 
not brighter than Guy had rendered the inside of 
the barber's basin. Schoolmaster, Father and Son 
retired to a place out of observation, by the side of 
the river, a wild stream tumbling among the huge 
stones which it had brought down from the hills. 



148 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

On one of these stones sate Daniel the elder, holding 
the basin in such an inclination toward the moon that 
there should be no shadow in it; Guy directed the 
boy where to place himself so as not to intercept the 
light, and stood looking complacently on, while young 
Daniel revolved his hands one in another within the 
empty basin, as if washing them. *'I feel them cold 
and clammy, Father!" said the boy. (It was the 
beginning of November). ''Aye," replied the father, 
"that's the cold moisture of the moon!" "Aye!" 
echoed the schoolmaster, and nodded his head in con- 
firmation. 

The operation was repeated on the two following 
nights ; and Daniel would have kept up his son two 
hours later than his regular time of rest to continue 
it on the third if the evening had not set in with 
clouds and rain. In spite of the patient's belief that 
the warts would waste away and were wasting, (for 
Prince Hohenlohe could not require more entire 
faith than was given on this occasion,) no alteration 
could be perceived in them at a fortnight's end. 
Daniel thought the experiment had failed because it 
had not been repeated sufficiently often, nor perhaps 
continued long enough. But the Schoolmaster was 
of opinion that the cause of failure was in the basin : 
for that silver being the lunar metal would by affinity 
assist the influential virtues of the moonlight, which 
finding no such affinity in a mixed metal of baser com- 
pounds, might contrariwise have its potential quahties 
weakened, or even destroyed when received in a 
brasen vessel, and reflected from it. Flossofer Daniel 
assented to this theory. Nevertheless as the child 
got rid of his troublesome excrescences in the course 
of three or four months, all parties disregarding the 
lapse of time at first, and afterwards fairly forgetting 



THE DOCTOR 149 

it, agreed that the remedy had been effectual, and 
Sir Kenehn, if he had been living, might have pro- 
cured the solemn attestation of men more veracious 
than himself that moonshine was an infallible cure 
for warts. Chapter Vn. 



A KIND SCHOOLMASTER AND A HAPPY SCHOOLBOY 

Though happily thou wilt say that wands be to be wrought 
when they are green, lest they rather break than bend when 
they be dry, yet know also that he that bendeth a twig because 
he wovdd see if it would bow by strength may chance to have a 
crooked tree when he would have a straight. ^ 

EUPHUES. 

From this time the two Flossofers were friends. 
Daniel seldom went to Ingleton without looking in 
upon Guy, if it were between school hours. Guy 
on his part would walk as far with him on the way back, 
as the tether of his own time allowed, and frequently on 
Saturdays and Sundays he strolled out and took a 
seat by Daniel's fireside. Even the wearying occu- 
pation of hearing one generation of urchins after 
another repeat a-b-ab, hammering the first rules 
of arithmetic into leaden heads, and pacing like a 
horse in a mill the same dull dragging round day after 
day, had neither diminished Guy's good-nature, nor 
lessened his love for children. He had from the first 
conceived a liking for young Daniel, both because of 
the right principle which was evinced by the manner in 
which he proposed the question concerning steahng 
the beans, and of the profound gravity (worthy of 
a Flossofer's son) with which he behaved in the affair 
of the moonshine. All that he saw and heard of 
him tended to confirm this favourable prepossession ; 
and the boy, who had been taught to read in the Bible 



150 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

and in Stowe's Chronicle, was committed to his 
tuition at seven years of age. 

Five days in the week (for in the North of Eng- 
land Saturday as well as Sunday is a Sabbath to the 
Schoolmaster) did young Daniel, after supping his 
porringer of oatmeal pottage, set off to school, with a 
little basket containing his dinner in his hand. This 
provision usually consisted of oat-cake and cheese, 
the latter in goodly proportion, but of the most frugal 
quaUty, whatever cream the milk afforded having 
been consigned to the butter tub. Sometimes it was 
a piece of cold bacon or of cold pork ; and in winter 
there was the luxury of a shred pie, which is a coarse 
north country edition of the pie abhorred by puritans. 
The distance was in those days called two miles; 
but miles of such long measure that they were for 
him a good hour's walk at a cheerful pace. He 
never loitered on the way, being at all times brisk in 
his movements, and going to school with a spirit as 
light as when he returned from it, like one whose 
blessed lot it was never to have experienced, and 
therefore never to stand in fear of severity or unkind- 
ness. For he was not more a favourite with Guy for 
his dociHty and regularity and diligence, than he 
was with his schoolfellows for his thorough good- 
nature and a certain original oddity of humour. 

There are some boys who take as much pleasure in 
exercising their intellectual faculties, as others do 
when putting forth the power of arms and legs in 
boisterous exertion. Young Daniel was from his 
childhood fond of books. William Dove used to 
say he was a chip of the old block ; and this heredi- 
tary disposition was regarded with much satisfaction 
by both parents, Dinah having no higher ambition 
nor better wish for her son, than that he might prove 



THE DOCTOR 151 

like his father in all things. This being the bent of 
his nature, the boy having a kind master as well as a 
happy home, never tasted of what old Lily calls 
(and well might call) the wearisome bitterness of the 
scholar's learning. He was never subject to the brutal 
discipline of the Udals, and Busbys, and Bowyers, 
and Parrs, and other less notorious tyrants who have 
trodden in their steps ; nor was any of that inhuman 
injustice ever exercised upon him to break his spirit, 
for which it is to be hoped Dean Colet has paid in 
Purgatory ; — to be hoped, I say, because if there be 
no Purgatory, the Dean may have gone farther and 
fared worse. Being the only Latiner in the school, his 
lessons were heard with more interest and less for- 
maHty. Guy observed his progress with almost as 
much delight and as much hope as Daniel himself. A 
schoolmaster who likes his vocation feels toward the 
boys who deserve his favour, something like a thrifty 
and thriving father toward the children for whom he 
is scraping together wealth ; he is contented that his 
humble and patient industry should produce fruit 
not for himself, but for them, and looks with pride 
to a result in which it is impossible for him to partake, 
and which in all likelihood he may never live to see. 
Even some of the old Phlebotomists have had this 
feeling to redeem them. Chapter VIII. 



ONE WHO WAS NOT SO WISE AS HIS FRIENDS COULD HAVE WISHED, 
AND YET QUITE AS HAPPY AS IF HE HAD BEEN WISER. NEP- 
OTISM NOT CONFINED TO POPES. 

There are of madmen as there are of tame, 

All humoured not alike. — Some 

Apish and fantastic ; 

And though 'twould grieve a soul to see God's image 



152 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

So blemished and defaced, yet do they act 

Such antic and such pretty lunacies, 

That spite of sorrow, they will make you smile. 

Dekkf.r. 



William Dove was Daniel's only surviving brother, 
seven years his junior. He was born with one of 
those heads in which the thin partition that divides 
great wits from folly is wanting. Had he come into 
the world a century sooner, he would have been taken 
nolens volens into some Baron's household, to wear 
motley, make sport for the guests and domestics, and 
live in fear of the rod. But it was his better fortune 
to Hve in an age when this calamity rendered him 
Hable to no such oppression, and to be precisely in 
that station which secured for him all the enjoyments 
of which he was capable, and all the care he needed. 
In higher Hfe, he would probably have been consigned 
to the keeping of strangers who would have taken 
charge of him for pay ; in a humbler degree he must 
have depended upon the parish for support ; or have 
been made an inmate of one of those moral lazar- 
houses in which age and infancy, the harlot and the 
idiot, the profligate and the unfortunate are herded 
together. 

William Dove escaped these aggravations of ca- 
lamity. He escaped also that persecution to which 
he would have been exposed in populous places where 
boys run loose in packs, and harden one another in 
impudence, mischief and cruelty. Natural feeling, 
when natural feeling is not corrupted, leads men 
to regard persons in his condition with a compassion 
not unmixed with awe. It is common with the coun- 
try people when they speak of such persons to point 
significantly at the head and say 'tis not all there; — 



THE DOCTOR 153 

words denoting a sense of the mysteriousness of our 
nature which perhaps they feel more deeply on this 
than on any other occasion. No outward and visible 
deformity can make them so truly apprehend how 
fearfully and wonderfully we are made. 

William Dove's was not a case of fatuity. Though 
all was not there, there was a great deal. He was 
what is called half-saved. Some of his faculties were 
more than ordinarily acute, but the power of self 
conduct was entirely wanting in him. Fortunately 
it was supplied by a sense of entire dependence which 
produced entire docility. A dog does not obey his 
master more dutifully than WilHam obeyed his 
brother ; and in this obedience there was nothing of 
fear ; with all the strength and simpKcity of a child's 
love, it had also the character and merit of a moral 
attachment. 

The professed and privileged fool was generally 
characterised by a spice of knavery, and not unfre- 
quently of maliciousness : the unnatural situation in 
which he was placed, tended to excite such propen- 
sities and even to produce them. WilHam had 
shrewdness enough for the character, but nothing of 
this appeared in his disposition ; ill-usage might 
perhaps have awakened it, and to a fearful degree, if 
he had proved as sensible to injury as he was to kind- 
ness. But he had never felt an injury. He could 
not have been treated with more tenderness in Tur- 
key (where a degree of holiness is imputed to persons 
in his condition) than was uniformly shown him 
within the little sphere of his perambulations. It was 
surprizing how much he had picked up within that 
little sphere. Whatever event occurred, whatever 
tale was current, whatever traditions were preserved, 
whatever superstitions were believed, William knew 



154 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

them all ; and all that his insatiable ear took in, his 
memory hoarded. Half the proverbial sayings in 
Ray's volume were in his head, and as many more 
with which Ray was unacquainted. He knew many 
of the stories which our children are now receiving 
as novelties in the selections from Grimm's Kinder 
und Haus-Mdrchen, and as many of those which are 
collected in the Danish Folk-Sagn. And if some 
zealous lover of legendary lore, (like poor John Leyden, 
or Sir Walter Scott,) had fallen in with him, the 
Shakesperian commentators might perhaps have had 
the whole story of St. Withold ; the Wolf of the 
World's End might have been identified with Fenris 
and found to be a relic of the Scalds : and Rauf Col- 
lyer and John the Reeve might still have been as 
well known as Adam Bell, and Clym of the Clough, 
and William of Cloudeslie. 

William had a great fondness for his nephew. 
Let not Protestants suppose that Nepotism is an 
affection confined to the dignitaries of the Roman 
Catholic Church. In its excess indeed it is pecu- 
liarly a Papal vice, — which is a degree higher than 
a Cardinal one; but like many other sins it grows 
out of the corruption of a good feeHng. It may be 
questioned whether fond uncles are not as numerous 
as unkind ones, notwithstanding our recollections of 
King Richard and the Children in the Wood. We 
may use the epithet nepotious for those who carry 
this fondness to the extent of doting, and as expressing 
that degree of fondness it may be appHed to William 
Dove : he was a nepotious uncle. The father re- 
garded young Daniel with a deeper and more thought- 
ful, but not with a fonder affection, not with such a 
doting attachment. Dinah herself, though a fond as 
well as careful mother, did not more thoroughly 



THE DOCTOR 155 

delight to hear 

Her early child mis-speak half-uttered words ; ^ 

and perhaps the boy, so long as he was incapable of 
distinguishing between their moral quahties, and 
their relative claims to his respect and love and duty, 
loved his uncle most of the three. The father had 
no idle hours ; in the intervals when he was not other- 
wise employed, one of his dear books usually lay open 
before him, and if he was not feeding upon the page, 
he was ruminating the food it had afforded him. 
But William Dove, from the time that his nephew 
became capable of noticing and returning caresses 
seemed to have concentrated upon him all his affec- 
tions. With children affection seldom fails of find- 
ing its due return ; and if he had not thus won the 
boy's heart in infancy, he would have secured it in 
childhood by winning his ear with these marvellous 
stories. But he possessed another talent which would 
alone have made him a favourite with children, — 
the power of imitating animal sounds with singular 
perfection. A London manager would have paid 
him well for performing the cock in Hamlet. He 
could bray in octaves to a nicety, set the geese gab- 
bling by addressing them in their own tongue, and make 
the turkey-cock spread his fan, brush his wing against 
the ground, and angrily gob-gobble in answer to a 
gobble of defiance. But he prided himself more 
upon his success with the owls, as an accomplishment 
of more difficult attainment. In this Mr. Words- 
worth's boy of Winander was not more perfect. 
Both hands were used as an instrument in producing 
the notes ; and if Pope could have heard the responses 
which came from barn and doddered oak and ivied 

1 Donne. 



156 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

crag, he would rather, (satirist as he was,) have left 
Ralph unsatirized, than have vilified one of the wildest 
and sweetest of nocturnal sounds. 

He was not less expert to a human ear in hitting 
off the wood-pigeon's note, though he could not in this 
instance provoke a reply. This sound he used to say- 
ought to be natural to him, and it was wrong in the 
bird not to acknowledge his relation. Once when he 
had made too free with a lass's lips, he disarmed his 
brother of a reprehensive look, by pleading that as his 
name was William Dove it behoved him both to bill 
and to coo. Chapter X. 



SHOWING HOW THE YOUNG STUDENT FELL IN LOVE — AND HOW 
HE MADE THE BEST USE OF HIS MISFORTUNE. 

// creder, donne vaghe, e cortesia, 

Quando colui che scrive che favella, 
Fossa essere sospetto di bugia, 

Per dir qualcosa troppo rara e bella. 
Dunque chi ascolta questa istoria mea 

E non la crede Jrottola novella 
Ma cosa vera — come ella e di fatio, 

Fa che di lui mi chiami soddisfaiio. 

E pure che mi diate piena fede, 
De la dubbiezza altrui poco mi cole} 

RiCCIARDETTO. 

Dear Ladies, I can neither tell you the name of the 
Burgemeester's Daughter, nor of the Burgemeester 
himself. If I ever heard them they have escaped 

^ It is courtesy, lovely ladies, to believe when he who writes or 
speaks might be suspected of a lie in saying something too strange 
and fine. Therefore whoever listens to this story of mine and thinks 
it neither a fable nor a novel but a thing of very truth, as it is indeed, 
will make me well content with him. And if only you give me your 
full trust I care little for the doubts of the rest. 



THE DOCTOR 1 57 

my recollection. The Doctor used to say his love 
for her was in two respects like the small-pox ; for 
he took it by inoculation, and having taken it, he 
was secured from ever having the disease in a more 
dangerous form. 

The case was a very singular one. Had it not been 
so it is probable I should never have been made 
acquainted with it. Most men seem to consider their 
unsuccessful love, when it is over, as a folly which 
they neither like to speak of, nor to remember. 

Daniel Dove never was introduced to the Burge- 
meester's Daughter, never was in company with her, 
and, as already has been intimated, never spoke to 
her. As for any hope of ever by any possibility ob- 
taining a return of his affection, a devout Roman 
Catholic might upon much better grounds hope that 
Saint Ursula, or any of her Eleven Thousand Virgins 
would come from her place in Heaven to reward his 
devotion with a kiss. The gulph between Dives and 
Lazarus was not more insuperable than the distance 
between such an English Greeny at Leyden and a 
Burgemeester's Daughter. 

Here, therefore, dear Ladies, you cannot look to 
read of 

Le speranze, gli qffetti, 
La data fe\ le tenerezze, i primi 
Scamhiewli sospiri, i primi sguardi} 

Nor will it be possible for me to give you 

— /' idea di quel volto 

Dove apprese il suo core 

La prima volla a sospirar d' amore? 

^ The hopes, the passions, the plighted vow, the endearments, the 
first exchange of sighs, the first communion of the eyes. Metasia. 

2 The idea of that countenance from which his heart learned for 
the first time to sigh of love. Metasia. 



158 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

This I cannot do ; for I never saw her picture, 
nor heard her features described. And most Hkely 
if I had seen her herself, in her youth and beauty, 
the most accurate description that words could con- 
vey might be just as like Fair Rosamond, Helen, 
Rachael, or Eve. Sufhce it to say that she was 
confessedly the beauty of that city, and of those 
parts. 

But it was not for the fame of her beauty that 
Daniel fell in love with her : so little was there of this 
kind of romance in his nature, that report never 
raised in him the sHghtest desire of seeing her. Her 
beauty was no more than Hecuba's to him, till he 
saw it. But it so happened that having once seen it, 
he saw it frequently, at leisure, and always to the 
best advantage: "and so," said he, *'I received the 
disease by inoculation." 

Thus it was. There was at Leyden an EngHsh 
Presbyterian Kirk for the use of the EngHsh students, 
and any other persons who might choose to frequent 
it. Daniel felt the want there of that Liturgy in the 
use of which he had been trained up : and finding 
nothing which could attract him to that place of 
worship except the use of his own language, — 
which, moreover, was not used by the preacher in any 
way to his edification, — he hstened willingly to the 
advice of the good man with whom he boarded, and 
this was that, as soon as he had acquired a sHght 
knowledge of the Dutch tongue, he should, as a means 
of improving himself in it, accompany the family 
to their parish church. Now this happened to be the 
very church which the Burgemeester and his family 
attended : and if the allotment of pews in that church 
had been laid out by Cupid himself, with the fore- 
purpose of catching Daniel as in a pitfall, his position 



THE DOCTOR 1 59 

there in relation to the Burgemeester's Daughter could 
not have been more exactly fixed. 

"God forgive me!" said he; "for every Sunday 
while she was worshipping her Maker, I used to 
worship her." 

But the folly went no farther than this; it led 
him into no act of absurdity, for he kept it to him- 
self; and he even turned it to some advantage, or 
rather it shaped for itself a useful direction, in this 
way : having frequent and unobserved opportunity 
of observing her lovely face, the countenance became 
fijfed so perfectly in his mind, that even after the 
lapse of forty years, he was sure, he said, that if he 
had possessed a painter's art, he could have produced 
her likeness. And having her beauty thus impressed 
upon his imagination, any other appeared to him only 
as a foil to it, during that part of his life when he was 
so circumstanced that it would have been an act of 
imprudence for him to run in love. 

I smile to think how many of my readers, when 
they are reading this chapter aloud in a domestic 
circle, will bring up at the expression of running in 
love; — ^ Hke a stage-coachman, who, driving at the 
smooth and steady pace of nine miles an hour on a 
macadamized road, comes upon some accidental 
obstruction only just in time to check the horses. 

Amorosa who flies into love ; and Amatura who 
flutters as if she were about to do the same ; and 
Amoretta who dances into it, (poor creatures, God 
help them all three !) and Amanda, — Heaven bless 
her ! — who will be led to it gently and leisurely 
along the path of discretion, they all make a sudden 
stop at the words. Chapter LII. 



l6o SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 



OF THE VARIOUS WAYS OF GETTING IN LOVE. A CHAPTER CON- 
TAINING SOME USEFUL OBSERVATIONS, AND SOME BEAUTIFUL 
POETRY. 

Let cavillers know, that as the Lord John answered the 
Queen in that Italian Guazzo, an old, a grave discreet man is 
fittest to discourse of love-matters ; because he hath likely 
more experience, observed more, hath a more staid judgement, 
can better discern, resolve, discuss, advise, give better cautions 
and more solid precepts, better inform his auditors in such a 
subject, and, by reason of his riper years, sooner divert. 

Burton. 

Slips of the tongue are sometimes found very in- 
convenient by those persons who, owing to some 
unlucky want of correspondence between their wits 
and their utterance, say one thing when they mean 
to say another, or bolt out something which the 
slightest degree of forethought would have kept un- 
said. But more serious mischief arises from that 
misuse of words which occurs in all inaccurate writers. 
Many are the men, who merely for want of under- 
standing what they say, have blimdered into here- 
sies and erroneous assertions of every kind, which 
they have afterwards passionately and pertinaciously 
defended, till they have estabUshed themselves in 
the profession, if not in the behef, of some pernicious 
doctrine or opinion, to their own great injury and that 
of their deluded followers, and of the commonwealth. 

There may be an opposite fault; for indeed upon 
the agathokakological globe there are opposite qual- 
ities always to be found in parallel degrees, north and 
south of the equator. 

A man may dwell upon words till he becomes at 
length a mere precisian in speech. He may think 
of their meaning till he loses sight of all meaning, and 



THE DOCTOR l6l 

they appear as dark and mysterious to him as chaos 
and outer night. "Death! Grave!" exclaims 
Goethe's suicide, "I understand not the words!" 
and so he who looks for its quintessence might ex- 
claim of every word in the dictionary. 

They who cannot swim should be contented with 
wading in the shallows : they who can may take to 
the deep water, no matter how deep, so it be clear. 
But let no one dive in the mud. 

I said that Daniel fell in love with the Burge- 
meester's Daughter, and I made use of the usual 
expression because there it was the most appropriate : 
for the thing was accidental. He himself could not 
have been more surprized if, missing his way in a 
fog, and supposing himself to be in the Breedestraat 
of Leyden, where there is no canal, he had fallen into 
the water ; — nor would he have been more com- 
pletely over head and ears at once. 

A man falls in love, just as he falls down stairs. 
It is an accident, — perhaps, and very probably a 
misfortune; something which he neither intended, 
nor foresaw, nor apprehended. But when he runs 
in love it is as when he runs in debt ; it is done know- 
ingly and intentionally; and very often rashly, and 
fooHshly, even if not ridiculously, miserably, and 
ruinously. 

Marriages that are made up at watering-places 
are mostly of this running sort ; and there may be 
reason to think that they are even less likely to lead 
to — I will not say happiness, but to a very humble 
degree of contentment, — than those which are a 
plain business of bargain and sale ; for into these 
latter a certain degree of prudence enters on both 
sides. But there is a distinction to be made here : 
the man who is married for mere worldly motives, 



1 62 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

without a spark of affection on the woman's part, 
may nevertheless get, in every worldly sense of the 
word, a good wife ; and while EngUsh women con- 
tinue to be what, thank Heaven, they are, he is likely 
to do so : but when a woman is married for the sake 
of her fortune, the case is altered, and the chances 
are five hundred to one that she marries a villain, or 
at best a scoundrel. 

Falling in love and running in love are both, as 
every body knows, common enough ; and yet less so 
than what I shall call catching love. Where the 
love itself is imprudent, that is to say, where there is 
some just prudential cause or impediment why the 
two parties should not be joined together in holy 
matrimony, there is generally some degree of culpable 
imprudence in catching it, because the danger is 
always to be apprehended, and may in most cases 
be avoided. But sometimes the circumstances may 
be such as leave no room for censure, even when there 
may be most cause for compassion ; and under such 
circumstances our friend, though the remembrance 
of the Burgemeester's daughter was too vivid in 
his imagination for him ever to run in love, or at that 
time deliberately to walk into it, as he afterwards 
did, — under such circumstances, I say, he took 
a severe affection of this kind. The story is a 
melancholy one, and I shall not relate it in this 
place. 

The rarest, and surely the happiest marriages, are 
between those who have grown in love. Take the 
description of such a love in its rise and progress, ye 
thousands and tens of thousands who have what is 
called a taste for poetry, — take it in the sweet words 
of one of the sweetest and tenderest of English Poets ; 
and if ye doubt upon the strength of my opinion 



THE DOCTOR 163 

whether Daniel deserves such praise, ask Leigh Hunt, 
or the Laureate, or Wordsworth, or Charles Lamb. 

Ah ! I remember well (and how can I 

But evermore remember well) when first 

Our flame began, when scarce we knew what was 

The flame we felt ; when as we sat and sighed 

And looked upon each other, and conceived 

Not what we ailed, — yet something we did ail ; 

And yet were well, and yet we were not well. 

And what was our disease we could not tell. 

Then would we kiss, then sigh, then look: and thus 

In that first garden of our simpleness 

We spent our childhood. But when years began 

To reap the fruit of knowledge, ah how then 

Would she with graver looks, with sweet stern brow, 

Check my presumption and my forwardness ; 

Yet still would give me flowers, still would me show 

What she would have me, yet not have me know. 

Take also the passage that presently follows this ; 
it alludes to a game which has long been obsolete, 
— but some fair reader I doubt not will remember the 
lines when she dances next. 

And when in sport with other company 
Of nymphs and shepherds we have met abroad. 
How would she steal a look, and watch mine eye 
Which way it went ? And when at Barley-break 
It came unto my turn to rescue her, 
With what an earnest, swift and nimble pace 
Would her affection make her feet to run. 
And further run than to my hand ! her race 
Had no stop but my bosom, where no end. 
And when we were to break again, how late 
And loth her trembling hand would part with mine ; 
And with how slow a pace would she set forth 
To meet the encountering party who contends 
To attain her, scarce affording him her fingers' ends ! ^ 

Chapter LIII. 
^ Hymen's Triumph. 



1 64 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

THE author's last VISIT TO DONCASTER 

Fuere quondam hac sedfuere ! 

Nunc ubi sint, rogitas ? Id annos 
Scire hos oportet scilicet. boncE 
Musce, Lepores — O Charites merce! 

O gaudia offuscata nullis 

Litibus! O sine nube soles! ^ ^ ^ 

JANUS DOUZA. 

I have more to say, dear Ladies, upon that which 
to you is, and ought to be, the most interesting of all 
worldly subjects, matrimony, and the various ways 
by which it is brought about ; but this is not the place 
for saying it. The Doctor is not at this time think- 
ing of a wife : his heart can no more be taken so long 
as it retains the lovely image of the Burgemeester's 
Daughter, than Troy-town while the Palladium was 
safe. 

Imagine him, therefore, in the year of our Lord 
1747, and in the twenty-sixth year of his age, returned 
to Doncaster, with the Burgemeester's Daughter, 
seated Hke the Lady in the Lobster, in his inmost 
breast ; with physic in his head and at his fingers' 
ends ; and with an appetite for knowledge which had 
long been feeding voraciously, digesting well, and 
increasing in its growth by what it fed on. Imagine 
him returned to Doncaster, and welcomed once more 
as a son by the worthy old Peter Hopkins and his 
good wife, in that comfortable habitation which I 
have heretofore described, and of which (as was at 
the same time stated) you may see a faithful repre- 
sentation in Miller's History of that good town ; a 
faithful representation, I say, of what it was in 1804; 

^ Once these things were — ah, they were ! Where are they now, 
you ask? These years ought to know that. O favoring Muses, O 
Pleasant ones — Oh ye pure Graces ! O joys undarkened with strife ! 
O suns unobscured by clouds ! 



THE DOCTOR 165 

the drawing was by Frederic Nash ; and Edward 
Shirt made a shift to engrave it ; the house had then 
undergone some alterations since the days when I 
frequented it ; and now ! — 

Of all things in this our mortal pilgrimage one of 
the most joyful is the returning home after an absence 
which has been long enough to make the heart yearn 
with hope, and not sicken with it, and then to find 
when you arrive there that all is well. But the most 
purely painful of all painful things is to visit after a 
long, long interval of time the place which was once 
our home ; — the most purely painful, because it is 
unmixed with fear, anxiety, disappointment, or any 
other emotion but what belongs to the sense of time 
and change, then pressing upon us with its whole 
unalleviated weight. 

It was my fortune to leave Doncaster early in life, 
and, having passed per varios casus, and through as 
large a proportion of good and evil in my humble 
sphere, as the pious ^neas, though not exactly per 
tot discrimina rerum, not to see it again till after an 
absence of more than forty years, when my way 
happened to lie through that town. I should never 
have had heart purposely to visit it, for that would 
have been seeking sorrow ; but to have made a cir- 
cuit for the sake of avoiding the place would have 
been an act of weakness ; and no man who has a 
proper degree of self-respect will do any thing of 
which he might justly feel ashamed. It was evening, 
and late in autumn, when I entered Doncaster, and 
alighted at the Old Angel Inn. "The Old Angel!" 
said I to my fellow-traveller; "you see that even 
Angels on earth grow old!" 

My companion knew how deeply I had been in- 
debted to Dr. Dove, and with what affection I cher- 



1 66 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

ished his memory. We presently sallied forth to 
look at his former habitation. Totally unknown as 
I now am in Doncaster, (where there is probably not 
one living soul who remembers either me, or my 
very name), I had determined to knock at the door, 
at a suitable hour on the morrow, and ask permission 
to enter the house in which I had passed so many 
happy and memorable hours, long ago. My age and 
appearance, I thought, might justify this Uberty ; 
and I intended also to go into the garden and see if 
any of the fruit trees were remaining, which my 
venerable friend had planted, and from which I had 
so often plucked and ate. 

When we came there, there was nothing by which 
I could have recognized the spot, had it not been for 
the Mansion House that immediately adjoined it. 
Half of its site had been levelled to make room for a 
street or road which had been recently opened. Not 
a vestige remained of the garden behind. The re- 
maining part of the house had been re-built; and 
when I read the name of R. Dennison on the door, 
it was something consolatory to see that the door 
itself was not the same which had so often opened to 
admit me. 

Upon returning to the spot on the following morn- 
ing I perceived that the part which had been re-built 
is employed as some sort of official appendage to the 
Mansion House ; and on the naked side-wall now 
open to the new street, or road, I observed most dis- 
tinctly where the old tall chimney had stood, and the 
outhne of the old pointed roof. These were the only 
vestiges that remained ; they could have no possible 
interest in any eyes but mine, which were likely never 
to behold them again ; and indeed it was evident that 
they would soon be effaced as a deformity, and the 



THE DOCTOR 167 

naked side-wall smoothed over with plaster. But 
they will not be effaced from my memory, for they 
were the last traces of that dweUing which is the 
Kebla of my retrospective day-dreams, the Sanctum 
Sanctorum of my dearest recollections ; and, like an 
apparition from the dead, once seen, they were never 
to be forgotten. Chapter LV. 



A TRUCE WITH MELANCHOLY. GENTLEMEN SUCH AS THEY WERE 
IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1 747- A HINT TO YOUNG LADIES 
CONCERNING THEIR GREAT-GRANDMOTHERS. 

Fashions that are now called new, 
Have been worn by more than you ; 
Elder times have used the same, 
Though these new ones get the name. 

MiDDLETON. 

Well might Ben Jonson call bell-ringing ''the 
poetry of steeples!" It is a poetry which in some 
heart or other is always sure to move an accordant key ; 
and there is not much of the poetry, so called by 
courtesy because it bears the appearance of verse, 
of which this can be said with equal truth. Doncaster 
since I was one of its inhabitants had been so greatly 
changed, — (improved I ought to say, for its outward 
changes had really been improvements,) — that 
there was nothing but my own recollections to carry 
me back into the past, till the clock of St. George's 
struck nine, on the evening of our arrival, and its 
chimes began to measure out the same time in the 
same tones which I used to hear as regularly as the 
hours came round, forty long years ago. 

Enough of this ! My visit to Doncaster was 
incidentally introduced by the comparison which I 
could not choose but make between such a return, 



1 68 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

and that of the Student from Leyden. We must 
now revert to the point from whence I strayed, and 
go farther back than the forty years over which the 
chimes, as if with magic, had transported me. We 
must go back to the year 1747, when gentlemen wore 
sky-blue coats, with silver button holes and huge 
cuffs extending more than half way from the middle 
of the hand to the elbow, short breeches just reaching 
to the silver garters at the knee, and embroidered 
waistcoats with long flaps which came almost as low. 
Were I to describe Daniel Dove in the wig which he 
then wore, and which observed a modest mean be- 
tween the bush of the Apothecary and the conse- 
quential foretop of the Physician with its depending 
knots, fore and aft ; were I to describe him in a sober 
suit of brown or snuff-coloured dittos, such as be- 
seemed his profession, but with cuffs of the dimen- 
sions, waistcoat-flaps of the length, and breeches of 
the brevity before mentioned ; Amorosa and Amatura 
and Amoretta would exclaim that love ought never 
to be named in connection with such a figure, — 
Amabilis, sweet girl, in the very bloom of innocence 
and opening youth, would declare she never could 
love such a creature, and Amanda herself would 
smile, not contemptuously, nor at her idea of the man, 
but at the mutability of fashion. Smile if you will, 
young Ladies ! your great-grandmothers wore large 
hoops, peaked stomachers, and modesty-bits ^ ; their 
riding-habits and waistcoats were trimmed with 
silver, and they had very gentleman-like perukes 
for riding in, as well as gentleman-like cocked hats. 

^ Probably the same as the Modesty-piece. Johnson quotes the 
following from the Guardian. "A narrow lace which runs along the 
upper part of the stays before, being a part of the tucker, is called 
the Modesty- piece." — in v. Warter. 



THE DOCTOR 169 

Yet, young Ladies, they were as gay and giddy in their 
time as you are now ; they were as attractive and as 
lovely ; they were not less ready than you are to laugh 
at the fashions of those who had gone before them ; 
they were wooed and won by gentlemen in short 
breeches, long flapped waistcoats, large cuffs, and 
tie-wigs ; and the wooing and winning proceeded 
much in the same manner as it had done in the gen- 
erations before them, as the same agreeable part of 
this world's business proceeds among yourselves, and 
as it will proceed when you will be as httle thought 
of by your great-grand-daughters as your great- 
grand-mothers are at this time by you. What care 
you for your great-grand-mothers ! 

The law of entails sufficiently proves that our 
care for our posterity is carried far, sometimes indeed 
beyond what is reasonable and just. On the other 
hand, it is certain that the sense of relationship in the 
ascending line produces in general little other feel- 
ing than that of pride in the haughty and high-born. 
That it should be so to a certain degree, is in the order 
of nature and for the general good : but that in our 
selfish state of society this indifference for our ances- 
tors is greater than the order of nature would of itself 
produce, may be concluded from the very different 
feeling which prevailed among some of the ancients, 
and still prevails in other parts of the world. 

He who said that he did not see why he should be 
expected to do any thing for Posterity, when Posterity 
had done nothing for him, might be deemed to have 
shown as much worthlessness as wit in this saying, if 
it were any thing more than the sportive sally of a 
light-hearted man. Yet one who "keeps his heart 
with all diligence," knowing that "out of it are the 
issues of life," will take heed never lightly to enter- 



lyo SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

tain a thought that seems to make light of a duty, — 
still less will he give it utterance. We owe much to 
Posterity, nothing less than all that we have received 
from our Forefathers. And for myself I should be un- 
willing to believe that nothing is due from us to our 
ancestors. If I did not acquire this feeling from the 
person who is the subject of these volumes, it was at 
least confirmed by him. He used to say that one of 
the gratifications which he promised himself after 
death, was that of becoming acquainted with all his 
progenitors, in order, degree above degree, up to Noah, 
and from him up to our first parents. "But," said 
he, "though I mean to proceed regularly step by 
step, curiosity will make me in one instance trespass 
upon this proper arrangement, and I shall take the 
earliest opportunity of paying my respects to Adam 
and Eve." Chapter LVI. 



SOCIETY OE A COUNTRY TOWN. SUCH A TOWN A MORE FAVOUR- 
ABLE HABITAT FOR SUCH A PERSON AS DR. DOVE THAN LONDON 
WOULD HAVE BEEN. 

Be then thine own home, and in thyself dwell ; 

Inn any where ; 

And seeing the snail, which every where doth roam, 

Carrying his own home still, still is at home, 

Follow (for he is easy paced) this snail ; 

Be thine own Palace, or the World's thy jail. 

Donne. 

Such then as Daniel Dove was in the twenty-sixth 
year of his age we are now to consider him, settled 
at Doncaster, and with his way of life chosen, for 
better for worse, in all respects ; except, as my female 
readers will remember, that he was neither married, 
nor engaged, nor likely to be so. 



THE DOCTOR 171 

One of the things for which he used to thank God 
was that the world had not been all before him where 
to choose, either as to calling or place, but that both 
had been well chosen for him. To choose upon such 
just motives as can leave no rational cause for after 
repentance requires riper judgment than ought to 
be expected at the age when the choice is to be made ; 
it is best for us therefore at a time of Hfe when, though 
perhaps we might choose well, it is impossible that 
we could choose wisely, to acquiesce in the determi- 
nation of others, who have knowledge and experience 
to direct them. Far happier are they who always 
know what they are to do, than they who have to 
determine what they will do. 

Bisogna far quel che si deve fare, 
E non gia tutto quello che si vuole} 

Thus he was accustomed to think upon this subject. 

But was he well placed at Doncaster? 

It matters not where those men are placed, who, 
as South says, "have souls so dull and stupid as to 
serve for little else but to keep their bodies from 
putrefaction." Ordinary people, whether their lot 
be cast in town or country, in the metropolis or 
in a village, will go on in the ordinary way, conform- 
ing their habits to those of the place. It matters 
nothing more to those who Hve less in the Httle world 
about them, than in a world of their own, with the 
whole powers of the head and of the heart too (if 
they have one) intently fixed upon some favourite 
pursuit : — if they have a heart I say, for it sometimes 
happens that where there is an excellent head, the 
heart is nothing more than a piece of hard flesh. 

^ One must do what he ought and not everything which he wishes. 
Pananti. 



172 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

In this respect, the highest and the meanest intel- 
lects are, in a certain sense, alike self-sufficient ; that 
is, they are so far independent of adventitious aid, 
that they derive little advantage from society and 
suffer nothing from the want of it. But there are 
others for whose mental improvement, or at least 
mental enjoyment, collision, and sympathy, and 
external excitement seem almost indispensable. Just 
as large towns are the only places in which first-rate 
workmen in any handicraft business can find employ- 
ment, so men of letters and of science generally appear 
to think that nowhere but in a metropolis can they 
find the opportunities which they desire of improve- 
ment or of display. These persons are wise in their 
generation, but they are not children of light. 

Among such persons it may perhaps be thought 
that our friend should be classed ; and it cannot be 
doubted that, in a more conspicuous field of action, 
he might have distinguished himself, and obtained a 
splendid fortune. But for distinction he never enter- 
tained the slightest desire, and with the goods of 
fortune which had fallen to his share he was perfectly 
contented. But was he favourably situated for his 
intellectual advancement ? — which, if such an in- 
quiry had come before him concerning any other 
person, is what he would have considered to be the 
question-issimus. I answer without the shghtest 
hesitation, that he was. 

In London he might have mounted a Physician's 
wig, have ridden in his carriage, have attained the 
honours of the College, and added F.R.S. to his pro- 
fessional initials. He might, if Fortune opening her 
eyes had chosen to favour desert, have become Sir 
Daniel Dove, Bart., Physician to his Majesty. But 
he would then have been a very different person from 



THE DOCTOR 1 73 

the Dr. Dove of Doncaster, whose memory will be 
transmitted to posterity in these volumes, and he 
would have been much less worthy of being remem- 
bered. The course of such a life would have left 
him no leisure for himself ; and metropolitan society, 
in rubbing off the singularities of his character, would 
just in the same degree have taken from its strength. 

It is a pretty general opinion that no society can 
be so bad as that of a small country town ; and certain 
it is that such towns offer little or no choice. You 
must take what they have and make the best of it. 
But there are not many persons to whom circum- 
stances allow much latitude of choice anywhere, 
except in those public places, as they are called, 
where the idle and the dissipated, like birds of a 
feather, flock together. In any settled place of resi- 
dence men are circumscribed by station and oppor- 
tunities, and just as much in the capital as in a pro- 
vincial town. No one will be disposed to regret this, 
if he observes, where men have most power of choos- 
ing their society, how Httle benefit is derived from 
it, or in other words, with how little wisdom it is 
used. 

After all, the common varieties of human character 
will be found distributed in much the same proportion 
everywhere, and in most places there will be a sprin- 
kling of the uncommon ones. Everywhere you may 
find the selfish and the sensual, the carking and the 
careful, the cunning and the credulous, the worldhng 
and the reckless. But kind hearts are also every- 
where to be found, right intentions, sober minds, and 
private virtues, — for the sake of which let us hope 
that God may continue to spare this hitherto highly- 
favoured nation, notwithstanding the fearful amount 
of our public and manifold offences. 



174 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

The society then of Doncaster, in the middle of the 
last century, was like that of any other country town 
which was neither the seat of manufactures, nor of 
a Bishop's see ; in either of which more information of 
a peculiar kind would have been found, — more 
active minds, or more cultivated ones. There was 
enough of those eccentricities for which the English 
above all other people are remarkable, those aber- 
rations of intellect which just fail to constitute legal 
insanity, and which, according to their degree, excite 
amusement or compassion. Nor was the town with- 
out its full share of talents ; these there was little to 
foster and encourage, but happily there was nothing 
to pervert and stimulate them to a premature and 
mischievous activity. 

In one respect it more resembled an episcopal than 
a trading city. The four kings and their respective 
suits of red and black were not upon more frequent 
service in the precincts of a cathedral, than in the 
good town of Doncaster. A stranger who had been 
invited to spend the evening with a family there, to 
which he had been introduced, was asked by the 
master of the house to take a card as a matter of 
course ; upon his replying that he did not play at 
cards, the company looked at him with astonishment, 
and his host exclaimed — ''What, Sir! not play at 
cards? the Lord help you!" 

I will not say the Lord helped Daniel Dove, because 
there would be an air of irreverence in the expression, 
the case being one in which he, or any one, might help 
himself. He knew enough of all the games which 
were then in vogue to have played at them, if he had 
so thought good ; and he would have been as willing, 
sometimes, in certain moods of mind, to have taken 
his seat at a card-table, in houses where card-playing 



THE DOCTOR 175 

did not form part of the regular business of life, as to 
have listened to a tune on the old-fashioned spinnet, 
or the then new-fashioned harpsichord. But that 
which as an occasional pastime he might have thought 
harmless and even wholesome, seemed to him some- 
thing worse than folly when it was made a kill-time, 
— the serious occupation for which people were 
brought together, — the only one at which some of 
them ever appeared to give themselves the trouble 
of thinking. And seeing its effects upon the temper, 
and how nearly this habit was connected with a spirit 
of gambling, he thought that cards had not without 
reason been called the Devil's Books. 

I shall not, therefore, introduce the reader to a 
Doncaster card-party, by way of showing him the 
society of the place. The Mrs. Shuffles, Mrs. Cuts, 
and Miss Dealems, the Mr. Tittles and Mrs. Tattles, 
the Humdrums and the Prateapaces, the Fribbles 
and the Peebles, the Perts and the Prims, the Little- 
wits and the Longtongues, the Heavyheads and the 
Broadbelows, are to be found everywhere. 

"It is quite right," says one of the Guessers at 
Truth, "that there should be a heavy duty on cards : 
not only on moral grounds ; not only because they 
act on a social party like a torpedo, silencing the 
merry voice and numbing the play of the features ; 
not only to still the hunger of the public purse, which, 
reversing the qualities of Fortunatus's, is always 
empty, however much you may put into it ; but also 
because every pack of cards is a malicious libel on 
courts, and on the world, seeing that the trumpery 
with number one at the head, is the best part of them ; 
and that it gives kings and queens no other com- 
panions than knaves." „ ,„„ 



176 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 



TRANSITION IN OUR NARRATIVE PREPARATORY TO A CHANGE IN 
THE doctor's LIFE. A SAD STORY SUPPRESSED. THE AUTHOR 
PROTESTS AGAINST PLAYING WITH THE FEELINGS OF HIS 
READERS. ALL ARE NOT MERRY THAT SEEM MIRTHFUL. THE 
SCAFFOLD A STAGE. DON RODRIGO CALDERON. THISTLE- 
WOOD. THE WORLD A MASQUERADE, BUT THE DOCTOR ALWAYS 
IN HIS OWN CHARACTER. 

This breaks no rule of order. 

If order were infringed then should I flee 

From my chief purpose and my mark should miss. 

Order is Nature's beauty, and the way 

To Order is by rules that Art hath found. 

GWILLIM. 

The question "Who was the Doctor?" has now, 
methinks, been answered, though not fully, yet suffi- 
ciently for the present stage of our memorials, while 
he is still a bachelor, a single man, an imperfect indi- 
vidual, half only of the whole being which by the laws 
of nature, and of Christian polity, it was designed 
that man should become. 

The next question therefore that presents itself 
for consideration relates to that other, and as he 
sometimes called it better half, which upon the union 
of the two moieties made him a whole man. — Who 
was Mrs. Dove? 

The reader has been informed how my friend in 
his early manhood, when about- to-be-a-Doctor, 
fell in love. Upon that part of his history, I have 
related all that he communicated, which was all that 
could by me be known, and probably all there was 
to know. From that time he never fell in love again ; 
nor did he ever run into it; but as was formerly 
intimated, he once caught the affection. The history 
of this attachment I heard from others ; he had suf- 
fered too deeply ever to speak of it himself ; and hav- 



THE DOCTOR 177 

ing maturely considered the matter I have determined 
not to relate the circumstances. Suffice it to say 
that he might at the same time have caught from the 
same person an insidious and mortal disease, if his 
constitution had been as susceptible of the one con- 
tagion, as his heart was of the other. The tale is too 
painful to be told. There are authors enough in 
the world who delight in drawing tears ; there will 
always be young readers enough who are not unwill- 
ing to shed them ; and perhaps it may be wholesome 
for the young and happy upon whose tears there is 
no other call. 

Not that the author is to be admired, or even 
excused, who draws too largely upon our lachrymal 
glands. The pathetic is a string which may be touched 
by an unskilful hand, and which has often been played 
upon by an unfeeling one. 

For my own part, I wish neither to make my 
readers laugh nor weep. It is enough for me, if I 
may sometimes bring a gleam of sunshine upon thy 
brow, Pensoso; and a watery one over thy sight, 
Buonallegro ; a smile upon Penserosa's lips, a dimple 
in Amanda's cheek, and some quiet tears, Sophronia, 
into those mild eyes, which have shed so many scald- 
ing ones ! When my subject leads me to distressful 
scenes, it will, as Southey says, not be 

— my purpose e'er to entertain 
The heart with useless grief ; but, as I may, 
Blend in my calm and meditative strain 
Consolatory thoughts, the balm for real pain.^ 

The maxim that an author who desires to make us 

weep must be affected himself by what he writes, is 

too trite to be repeated in its original language. 

Both authors and actors, however, can produce this 

1 Tale of Paraguay. 



178 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

effect without eliciting a spark of feeling from their 
own hearts ; and what perhaps may be deemed more 
remarkable, they can with the same success excite 
merriment in others, without partaking of it in the 
slightest degree themselves. No man ever made his 
contemporaries laugh more heartily than Scarron, 
whose bodily sufferings were such that he wished for 

himself 

— a toute heme 

Ou la mart, ou santS meilleure: ^ 

And who describes himself in his epistle to Sarazin, 

^^ Un Pauvret 

Tres-maigret; 
Au col tors, 
Dont le corps 
Tout tortu, 
Tout hossu, 
Suranne, 
DecharnS, 
Est reduit 
Jour et nuit 
A souffrir 
Sans guerir 
Des tourmens 
Vehemens.^ 

It may be said perhaps that Scarron's disposition 
was eminently cheerful, and that by indulging in 
buffoonery he produced in himself a pleasurable 
excitement, not unlike that which others seek from 
strong liquors, or from opium ; and therefore that his 
example tends to invahdate the assertion in support 
of which it was adduced. This is a plausible objec- 
tion ; and I am far from undervaluing the philosophy 

^ At every hour either death or better health. 

2 A poor lean fellow, with twisted neck, whose crooked body, 
humped, aged, dried, is reduced to suffer by day and night violent, 
incurable torments. 



THE DOCTOR 179 

of Pantagruelism, and from denying that its effects 
may, and are likely to be as salutary, as any that were 
ever produced by the proud doctrines of the Porch, 
But I question Scarron's right to the appellation of 
a Pantagruelist ; his humour had neither the height 
nor the depth of that philosophy. 

There is a well-known anecdote of a physician, who 
being called in to an unknown patient, found him 
suffering under the deepest depression of mind, with- 
out any discoverable disease, or other assignable 
cause. The physician advised him to seek for cheer- 
ful objects, and recommended him especially to go 
to the theatre and see a famous actor then in the 
meridian of his powers, whose comic talents were 
unrivalled. Alas ! the comedian who kept crowded 
theatres in a roar was this poor hypochondriac 
himself ! 

The state of mind in which such men play their 
part, whether as authors or actors, was confessed 
in a letter written from Yarmouth Gaol to the Doc- 
tor's friend Miller, by a then well-known performer 
in this line, George Alexander Stevens. He wrote 
to describe his distress in prison, and to request that 
Miller would endeavour to make a small collection for 
him, some night at a concert : and he told his sad 
tale sportively. But breaking off that strain, he 
said ; "You may think I can have no sense, that while 
I am thus wretched I should offer at ridicule ! But, 
Sir, people constituted Uke me, with a disproportion- 
ate levity of spirits, are always most merry when they 
are most miserable ; and quicken like the eyes of the 
consumptive, which are always brightest the nearer 
a patient approaches to dissolution." 

It is one thing to jest, it is another to be mirthful. 
Sir Thomas More jested as he ascended the scaffold. 



l8o SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

In case of violent death, and especially upon an un- 
just sentence, this is not surprizing; because the 
sufferer has not been weakened by a wasting malady, 
and is in a state of high mental excitement and exer- 
tion. But even when dissolution comes in the course 
of nature, there are instances of men who have died 
with a jest upon their Ups. Garci Sanchez de Bada- 
joz when he was at the point of death desired that he 
might be dressed in the habit of St. Francis ; this 
was accordingly done, and over the Franciscan frock 
they put on his habit of Santiago, for he was a knight 
of that order. It was a point of devotion with him 
to wear the one dress, a point of honour to wear 
the other; but looking at himself in this double 
attire, he said to those who surrounded his death- 
bed, ''The Lord will say to me presently, my friend 
Garci Sanchez, you come very well wrapt up ! 
{muy arropado) and I shall reply, Lord, it is no 
wonder, for it was winter when I set off." 

The author who relates this anecdote remarks that 
morrer com graqa he muyto horn, e com graqas he 
muyto mdo: the observation is good but untrans- 
lateable, because it plays upon the word which means 
grace as well as wit. The anecdote itself is an example 
of the ruling humour "strong in death"; perhaps 
also of that pride or vanity, call it which we will, which 
so often, when mind and body have not yielded to 
natural decay, or been broken down by suffering, 
cHngs to the last in those whom it has strongly 
possessed. Don Rodrigo Calderon, whose fall and 
exemplary contrition served as a favourite topic for 
the poets of his day, wore a Franciscan habit at his 
execution, as an outward and visible sign of peni- 
tence and humihation ; as he ascended the scaffold, 
he lifted the skirts of the habit with such an air 



THE DOCTOR l8l 

that his attendant confessor thought it necessary to 
reprove him for such an instance of ill-timed regard 
to his appearance. Don Rodrigo excused himself 
by saying that he had all his hfe carried himself 
gracefully ! 

The author by whom this is related calls it an in- 
stance of illustrious hypocrisy. In my judgment 
the Father Confessor who gave occasion for it de- 
serves a censure far more than the penitent sufferer. 
The movement beyond all doubt was purely habitual, 
as much so as the act of Ufting his feet to ascend the 
steps of the scaffold ; but the undeserved reproof 
made him feel how curiously whatever he did was 
remarked ; and that consciousness reminded him that 
he had a part to support, when his whole thoughts 
would otherwise have been far differently directed. 

A personage in one of Webster's Plays says, 

I knew a man that was to lose his head 

Feed with an excellent good appetite 

To strengthen his heart, scarce half an hour before, 

And if he did, it only was to speak. 

Probably the dramatist alluded to some well known 
fact which was at that time of recent occurrence. 
When the desperate and atrocious traitor Thistlewood 
was on the scaffold, his demeanour was that of a man 
who was resolved boldly to meet the fate he had de- 
served ; in the few words which were exchanged be- 
tween him and his fellow criminals he observed, that 
the grand question whether or not the soul was 
immortal would soon be solved for them. No expres- 
sion of hope escaped him, no breathing of repen- 
tance ; no spark of grace appeared. Yet (it is a 
fact, which whether it be more consolatory or awful, 
ought to be known), on the night after the sentence, 



l82 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

and preceding his execution, while he supposed that 
the person who was appointed to watch him in his 
cell, was asleep, this miserable man was seen by that 
person repeatedly to rise upon his knees, and heard 
repeatedly calling upon Christ his Saviour, to have 
mercy upon him, and to forgive him his sins ! 

All men and women are verily, as Shakspeare has 
said of them, merely players, — when we see them 
upon the stage of the world ; that is, when they are 
seen any where except in the freedom and undressed 
intimacy of private life. There is a wide difference 
indeed in the performers, as there is at a masquerade 
between those who assume a character, and those 
who wear dominoes ; some play off the agreeable, or 
the disagreeable for the sake of attracting notice ; 
others retire as it were into themselves ; but you can 
judge as little of the one as of the other. It is even 
possible to be acquainted with a man long and fa- 
miliarly, and as we may suppose intimately, and yet 
not to know him thoroughly or well. There may be 
parts of his character with which we have never come 
in contact, — recesses which have never been opened 
to us, — springs upon which we have never touched. 
Many there are who can keep their vices secret ; 
would that all bad men had sense and shame enough 
to do so, or were compelled to it by the fear of public 
opinion ! Shame of a very different nature, — a 
moral shamefacedness, — which, if not itself an in- 
stinctive virtue, is near akin to one, makes those who 
are endowed with the best and highest feelings, con- 
ceal them from all common eyes ; and for our per- 
formance of reUgious duties, — our manifestations 
of piety, — we have been warned that what of this 
kind is done to be seen of men, will not be rewarded 
openly before men and angels at the last. 



THE DOCTOR 183 

If I knew my venerable friend better than I ever 
knew any other man, it was because he was in many 
respects unHke other men, and in few points more 
unHke them than in this, that he always appeared 
what he was, — neither better nor worse. With a 
discursive intellect and a fantastic imagination, he 
retained his simpHcity of heart. He had kept that 
heart unspotted from the world ; his father's blessing 
was upon him, and he prized it beyond all that the 
world could have bestowed. Crowe says of us, 

Our better mind 
Is as a Sunday's garment, then put on 
When we have nought to do ; but at our work 
We wear a worse for thrift ! 

It was not so with him ; his better mind was not as a 
garment to be put on and off at pleasure ; it was like 
its plumage to a bird, its beauty and its fragrance 
to a flower, except that it was not liable to be rufHed, 
nor to fade, nor to exhale and pass away. His 
mind was hke a peacock always in full attire; it 
was only at times indeed, (to pursue the simiHtude,) 
that he expanded and displayed it ; but its richness 
and variety never could be concealed from those who 
had eyes to see them. 

— His sweetest mind 
'Twixt mildness tempered and low courtesy, 

Could leave as soon to be, as not be kind. 

Churlish despite ne'er looked from his calm eye, 

Much less commanded in his gentle heart ; 
To baser men fair looks he would impart ; 

Nor could he cloak ill thoughts in complimental art.^ 

What he was in boyhood has been seen, and some- 
thing also of his manlier years ; but as yet Httle of the 

^ Phineas Fletcher. 



184 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

ripe fruits of his intellectual autunm have been set 
before the readers. No such banquet was promised 
them as that with which they are to be regaled. 
"The booksellers," say Somner the antiquary, in 
an unpublished letter to Dugdale, "affect a great deal 
of title as advantageous for the sale ; but judicious 
men disHke it, as savouring of too much ostentation, 
and suspecting the wine is not good where so much 
bush is hung out." Somebody, I forget who, wrote 
a book upon the titles of books, regarding the title 
as a most important part of the composition. The 
bookseller's fashion of which Somner speaks has long 
been obsolete ; mine is a brief title promising little, 
but intending much. It specifies only the Doctor ; 
but his gravities and his levities, his opinions of men 
and things, his speculations moral and poUtical, 
physical and spiritual, his philosophy and his reH- 
gion, each blending with each, and all with all, these 
are comprised in the &c. of my title-page, — these 
and his Pantagruelism to boot. When I meditate 
upon these I may exclaim with the poet : — 

Mnemosyne hath kiss'd the kingly Jove, 
And entertained a feast within my brain.^ 

These I shall produce for the entertainment of the 
idle reader, and for the recreation of the busy one ; 
for the amusement of the young, and the contentment 
of the old ; for the pleasure of the wise, and the ap- 
probation of the good; and these when produced 
will be the monument of Daniel Dove. Of such a 
man it may indeed be said that he 

Is his own marble ; and his merit can 
Cut him to any figure, and express 
More art than Death's Cathedral palaces, 
Where royal ashes keep their court ! ^ 

^ Robert Green. ^ Middleton. 



THE DOCTOR 185 

Some of my contemporaries may remember a story 
once current at Cambridge, of a luckless undergrad- 
uate, who being examined for his degree, and faihng 
in every subject upon which he was tried, complained 
that he had not been questioned upon the things 
which he knew. Upon which the examining master, 
moved less to compassion by the impenetrable dul- 
ness of the man than to anger by his unreasonable 
complaint, tore off about an inch of paper, and push- 
ing it towards him, desired him to write upon that all 
he knew ! 

And yet bulky books are composed, or compiled 
by men who know as little as this poor empty indi- 
vidual. Tracts and treatises and tomes, may be, 
and are written by persons, to whom the smallest 
square sheet of dehcate note paper, rose-coloured, or 
green, or blue, with its embossed border, manufac- 
tured expressly for ladies' fingers and crow-quills, 
would afford ample room, and verge enough, for ex- 
pounding the sum total of their knowledge upon the 
subject whereon they undertake to enlighten the 
pubhc. 

Were it possible for me to pour out all that I have 
taken in from him, of whose accumulated stores I, 
alas ! am now the sole Kving depository, I know not 
to what extent the precious reminiscences might run. 

Per SIM gratia singulare 
Par ch' io hahbi nel capo una seguenza, 
Una fontana, unfiume, un lago, un mare, 

Id est un pantanaccio d' eloquenza} 

Sidronius Hosschius has supphed me with a simile 
for this stream of recollections. 

^^ By his singular grace, I seem to have in my head a run, a foun- 
tain, a stream, a lake, a sea, that is to say, a huge flux of eloquence. 
Matteo Franzesi. 



1 86 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

Mstuat et cursu nunquam cessante lahorat 
Eridanus, fessis irrequietus aquis ! 
Spumeus it, fervensque, undamque supervenii unda; 
Hcec illam, sed et hanc non minus ista premit. 
Vohitur, et volvit pariter, motuque perenni 
Truditur a jiuctu posteriore prior. 

As I shall proceed 

Excipiet curam nova cura, laborque laborem, 
Nee minus exhausto quod superabit erit} 

But for stores which in this way have been re- 
ceived, the best compacted memory is Hke a sieve ; 
more of necessity sHps through than stops upon 
the way ; and well is it, if that which is of most value 
be what remains behind. I have pledged myself, 
therefore, to no more than I can perform ; and this 
the reader shall have within reasonable hmits, and in 
due time, provided the performance be not prevented 
by any of the evils incident to human Hfe. 

At present, my business is to answer the question 
''Who was Mrs. Dove?" Chapter LXXI. 



RASH MARRIAGES. AN EARLY WIDOWHOOD. AFFLICTION REN- 
DERED A BLESSING TO THE SUFFERERS ; AND TWO ORPHANS 
LEFT, THOUGH NOT DESTITUTE, YET FRIENDLESS. 

Love built a stately house ; where Fortune came, 
And spinning fancies, she was heard to say 

That her fine cobwebs did support the frame ; 

Whereas they were supported by the same. 
But Wisdom quickly swept them all away. 

Herbert. 

^ The Eridanus billows and rages in its never ceasing course with 
the restless commotion of its troubled waters. Foaming it goes and 
surging, and wave topples over wave. Each drives the other with 
equal force, beats and is beaten back, and in the continual motion 
the first wave is crowded by that behind. ... A new care and a 
new trouble will take the place of the old, and that which will re- 
main will be no less than what is overpast. 



THE DOCTOR 187 

Mrs. Dove was the only child of a clergyman who 
held a small vicarage in the West Riding. Leonard 
Bacon, her father, had been left an orphan in early 
youth. He had some wealthy relations by whose con- 
tributions he was placed at an endowed grammar- 
school in the country, and having through their influ- 
ence gained a scholarship to which his own deserts 
might have entitled him, they continued to assist 
him — sparingly enough indeed — at the University, 
till he succeeded to a fellowship. Leonard was made 
of Nature's finest clay, and Nature had tempered 
it with the choicest dews of Heaven. 

He had a female cousin about three years younger 
than himself, and in Hke manner an orphan, equally 
destitute, but far more forlorn. Man hath a fleece 
about him which enables him to bear the buffetings of 
the storm ; — but woman when young, and lovely, 
and poor, is as a shorn lamb for which the wind has 
not been tempered. 

Leonard's father and Margaret's had been bosom 
friends. They were subalterns in the same regiment, 
and being for a long time stationed at SaHsbury, had 
become intimate at the house of Mr. Trewbody, a 
gentleman of one of the oldest families in Wiltshire. 
Mr. Trewbody had three daughters. MeHcent, the 
eldest, was a celebrated beauty, and the knowledge 
of this had not tended to improve a detestable temper. 
The two youngest, Deborah and Margaret, were 
lively, good-natured, thoughtless, and attractive. 
They danced with the two Lieutenants, played to 
them on the spinnet, sung with them and laughed 
with them, — till this mirthful intercourse became 
serious, and knowing that it would be impossible to 
obtain their father's consent, they married the men of 
their hearts without it. Palmer and Bacon were 



1 88 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

both without fortune, and without any other means 
of subsistence than their commissions. For four 
years they were as happy as love could make them ; 
at the end of that time Palmer was seized with an 
infectious fever. Deborah was then far advanced in 
pregnancy, and no soUcitations could induce Bacon 
to keep from his friend's bed-side. The disease 
proved fatal ; it communicated to Bacon and his 
wife ; the former only survived his friend ten days, 
and he and Deborah were then laid in the same grave. 
They left an only boy of three years old, and in less 
than a month the widow Palmer was dehvered of a 
daughter. 

In the first impulse of anger at the flight of his 
daughters and the degradation of his family, (for 
Bacon was the son of a tradesman, and Palmer was 
nobody knew who,) Mr. Trewbody had made his 
will, and left the whole sum which he had designed for 
his three daughters, to the eldest. Whether the 
situation of Margaret and the two orphans might 
have touched him is perhaps doubtful, — for the 
family were either light-hearted or hard-hearted, 
and his heart was of the hard sort ; but he died sud- 
denly a few months before his sons-in-law. The only 
son, Trewman Trewbody, Esq., a Wiltshire fox- 
hunter, like his father, succeeded to the estate; 
and as he and his eldest sister hated each other cor- 
dially, Miss Melicent left the manor-house, and estab- 
lished herself in the Close at Salisbury, where she 
lived in that style which a portion of 6000/. enabled 
her in those days to support. 

The circumstance which might appear so greatly 
to have aggravated Mrs. Palmer's distress, if such 
distress be capable of aggravation, prevented her 
perhaps from eventually sinking under it. If the 



THE DOCTOR 1 89 

birth of her child was no alleviation of her sorrow, it 
brought with it new feelings, new duties, new cause 
for exertion, and new strength for it. She wrote to 
Melicent and to her brother, simply stating her own 
destitute situation, and that of the orphan Leonard ; 
she believed that their pride would not suffer them 
either to let her starve or go to the parish for sup- 
port, and in this she was not disappointed. An 
answer was returned by Miss Trewbody informing her 
that she had nobody to thank but herself for her 
misfortunes; but that notwithstanding the disgrace 
which she had brought upon the family, she might 
expect an annual allowance of ten pounds from the 
writer, and a like sum from her brother; upon this 
she must retire into some obscure part of the country, 
and pray God to forgive her for the offence she had 
committed in marrying beneath her birth and against 
her father's consent. 

Mrs. Palmer had also written to the friends of 
Lieutenant Bacon, — her own husband had none 
who could assist her. She expressed her willingness 
and her anxiety to have the care of her sister's orphan, 
but represented her forlorn state. They behaved 
more liberally than her own kin had done, and prom- 
ised five pounds a-year as long as the boy should 
require it. With this and her pension she took a 
cottage in a retired village. Grief had acted upon 
her heart like the rod of Moses upon the rock in the 
desert; it had opened it, and the well-spring of 
piety had gushed forth. Affliction made her religious, 
and religion brought with it consolation and comfort 
and joy. Leonard became as dear to her as Mar- 
garet. The sense of duty educed a pleasure from 
every privation to which she subjected herself for 
the sake of economy ; and in endeavouring to fulfil 



190 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

her duties in that state of Hfe to which it had pleased 
God to call her, she was happier than she had ever 
been in her father's house, and not less so than in her 
marriage state. Her happiness indeed was different 
in kind, but it was higher in degree. For the sake of 
these dear children she was contented to live, and 
even prayed for hfe ; while if it had respected her- 
self only. Death had become to her rather an object 
of desire than of dread. In this manner she lived 
seven years after the loss of her husband, and was 
then carried off by an acute disease, to the irreparable 
loss of the orphans, who were thus orphaned indeed. 

Chapter LXXIII. 



A LADY DESCRIBED WHOSE SINGLE LIFE WAS NO BLESSEDNESS 
EITHER TO HERSELF OR OTHERS. A VERACIOUS EPITAPH AND 
AN APPROPRIATE MONUMENT. 

Beauty ! my Lord, — 'tis the worst part of woman ! 

A weak poor thing, assaulted every hour 

By creeping minutes of defacing time ; 

A superficies which each breath of care 

Blasts off ; and every humorous stream of grief 

Which flows from forth these fountains of our eyes, 

Washeth away, as rain doth winter's snow. ^ 

GOEF. 

Miss Trewbody behaved with perfect propriety 
upon the news of her sister's death. She closed her 
front windows for two days ; received no visitors for 
a week; was much indisposed, but resigned to the 
will of Providence, in reply to messages of condolence ; 
put her servants in mourning, and sent for Margaret 
that she might do her duty to her sister's child by 
breeding her up under her own eye. Poor Margaret 
was transferred from the stone floor of her mother's 
cottage to the Turkey carpet of her aunt's parlour. 



THE DOCTOR 191 

She was too young to comprehend at once the whole 
evil of the exchange ; but she learned to feel and under- 
stand it during years of bitter dependence, unalle- 
viated by any hope, except that of one day seeing 
Leonard, the only creature on earth whom she re- 
membered with affection. 

Seven years elapsed, and during all those years 
Leonard was left to pass his hoHdays, summer and 
winter, at the grammar-school where he had been 
placed at Mrs. Palmer's death: for although the 
master regularly transmitted with his half-yearly bill 
the most favourable accounts of his disposition and 
general conduct, as well as of his progress in learning, 
no wish to see the boy had ever arisen in the hearts 
of his nearest relations ; and no feeling of kindness, 
or sense of decent humanity, had ever induced either 
the fox-hunter Trewman or Melicent his sister, to 
invite him for Midsummer or Christmas. At length 
in the seventh year a letter announced that his school- 
education had been completed, and that he was 

elected to a scholarship at College, Oxford, 

which scholarship would entitle him to a fellowship 
in due course of time : in the intervening years some 
little assistance from his Uheral benefactors would be 
required ; and the liberality of those kind friends 
would be well bestowed upon a youth who bade so 
fair to do honour to himself, and to reflect no disgrace 
upon his honourable connections. The head of the 
family promised his part, with an ungracious expres- 
sion of satisfaction at thinking that "thank God, 
there would soon be an end of these demands upon 
him." Miss Trewbody signified her assent in the 
same amiable and religious spirit. However much her 
sister had disgraced her family, she replied, "please God 
itshould never be said that she refused to do her duty." 



192 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

The whole sum which these wealthy relations 
contributed was not very heavy, — an annual ten 
pounds each : but they contrived to make their 
nephew feel the weight of every separate portion. 
The Squire's half came always with a brief note 
desiring that the receipt of the enclosed sum might 
be acknowledged without delay, — not a word of 
kindness or courtesy accompanied it : and Miss 
Trewbody never failed to administer with her remit- 
tance a few edifying remarks upon the folly of his 
mother in marrying beneath herself ; and the improper 
conduct of his father in connecting himself with a 
woman of family, against the consent of her relations, 
the consequence of which was that he had left a child 
dependent upon those relations for support. Leon- 
ard received these pleasant preparations of charity 
only at distant intervals, when he regularly expected 
them, with his half-yearly allowance. But Mar- 
garet meantime was dieted upon the food of bitter- 
ness, without one circumstance to relieve the misery 
of her situation. 

At the time, of which I am now speaking, Miss 
Trewbody was a maiden lady of forty-seven, in the 
highest state of preservation. The whole business 
of her Hfe had been to take care of a fine person, and 
in this she had succeeded admirably. Her library 
consisted of two books ; Nelson's Festivals and Fasts 
was one, the other was "the Queen's Cabinet un- 
locked;" and there was not a cosmetic in the latter 
which she had not faithfully prepared. Thus by 
means, as she believed, of distilled waters of various 
kinds, May-dew and butter-milk, her skin retained 
its beautiful texture still, and much of its smoothness ; 
and she knew at times how to give it the appearance 
of that brilliancy which it had lost. But that was a 



THE DOCTOR 193 

profound secret. Miss Trewbody, remembering the 
example of Jezebel, always felt conscious that she 
was committing a sin when she took the rouge-box 
in her hand, and generally ejaculated in a low voice, 
the Lord forgive me ! when she laid it down : but 
looking in the glass at the same time, she indulged 
a hope that the nature of the temptation might be 
considered as an excuse for the transgression. Her 
other great business was to observe with the utmost 
precision all the punctilios of her situation in life; 
and the time which was not devoted to one or other 
of these worthy occupations, was employed in scold- 
ing her servants, and tormenting her niece. This 
employment, for it was so habitual that it deserved 
the name, agreed excellently with her constitution. 
She was troubled with no acrid humours, no fits of 
bile, no diseases of the spleen, no vapours or hysterics. 
The morbid matter was all collected in her temper, 
and found a regular vent at her tongue. This kept 
the lungs in vigorous health ; nay, it even seemed to 
supply the place of wholesome exercise, and to stim- 
ulate the system Hke a perpetual bhster, with this 
peculiar advantage, that instead of an inconvenience 
it was a pleasure to herself, and all the annoyance 
was to her dependents. 

Miss Trewbody lies buried in the Cathedral at 
Salisbury, where a monument was erected to her 
memory worthy of remembrance itself for its appro- 
priate inscription and accompaniments. The epi- 
taph recorded her as a woman eminently pious, vir- 
tuous, and charitable, who lived universally respected, 
and died sincerely lamented by all who had the 
happiness of knowing her. This inscription was upon 
a marble shield supported by two Cupids, who bent 
their heads over the edge, with marble tears larger 



194 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

than grey pease, and something of the same colour, 
upon their cheeks. These were the only tears which 
her death occasioned, and the only Cupids with 
whom she had ever any concern. 

Chapter LXXIV. 



A SCENE WHICH WILL PUT SOME OF THOSE READERS WHO HAVE 
BEEN MOST IMPATIENT WITH THE AUTHOR IN THE BEST OF 
HUMOUR WITH HIM. 

There is no argument of more antiquity and elegancy than 
is the matter of Love ; for it seems to be as old as the world, 
and to bear date from the first time that man and woman was : 
therefore in this, as in the finest metal, the freshest wits have in 
all ages shown their best workmanship. 

Robert Wilmot. 

When Leonard had resided three years at Oxford, 
one of his college-friends invited him to pass the long 
vacation at his father's house, which happened to be 
within an easy ride of Salisbury. One morning, 
therefore, he rode to that city, rung at Miss Trew- 
body's door, and having sent in his name, was admitted 
into the parlour, where there was no one to receive 
him, while Miss Trewbody adjusted her head-dress 
at the toilette, before she made her appearance. 
Her feelings while she was thus employed were not of 
the pleasantest kind toward this unexpected guest; 
and she was prepared to accost him with a reproof 
for his extravagance in undertaking so long a journey, 
and with some mortifying questions concerning the 
business which brought him there. But this ami- 
able intention was put to flight, when Leonard, 
as soon as she entered the room, informed her that 
having accepted an invitation into that neighbour- 
hood from his friend and fellow-collegian, the son 



THE DOCTOR 195 

of Sir Lambert Bowles, he had taken the earliest 
opportunity of coming to pay his respects to her, and 
acknowledging his obligations, as bound aHke by 
duty and inclination. The name of Sir Lambert 
Bowles acted upon Miss Trewbody like a charm; 
and its molHfying effect was not a little aided by the 
tone of her nephew's address, and the sight of a fine 
youth in the first bloom of manhood, whose appear- 
ance and manners were such that she could not be 
surprized at the introduction he had obtained into 
one of the first families in the county. The scowl, 
therefore, which she brought into the room upon her 
brow, passed instantly away, and was succeeded by so 
gracious an aspect, that Leonard, if he had not di- 
vined the cause, might have mistaken this gleam of 
sunshine for fair weather. 

A cause which Miss Trewbody could not possibly 
suspect had rendered her nephew's address thus con- 
ciliatory. Had he expected to see no other person 
in that house, the visit would have been performed 
as an irksome obligation, and his manner would have 
appeared as cold and formal as the reception which 
he anticipated. But Leonard had not forgotten the 
playmate and companion with whom the happy years 
of his childhood had been passed. Young as he was 
at their separation, his character had taken its stamp 
during those peaceful years, and the impression 
which it then received was indeHble. Hitherto hope 
had never been to him so delightful as memory. 
His thoughts wandered back into the past more fre- 
quently than they took flight into the future; and 
the favourite form which his imagination called up 
was that of the sweet child, who in winter partook 
his bench in the chimney corner, and in summer sate 
with him in the porch, and strung the fallen blossoms 



196 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

of jessamine upon stalks of grass. The snowdrop 
and the crocus reminded him of their little garden, 
the primrose of their sunny orchard-bank, and the 
blue bells and the cowslip of the fields wherein they 
were allowed to run wild and gather them in the 
merry month of May. Such as she then was he saw 
her frequently in sleep, with her blue eyes, and rosy 
cheeks, and flaxen curls : and in his day-dreams he 
sometimes pictured her to himself such as he sup- 
posed she now might be, and dressed up the image 
with all the magic of ideal beauty. His heart, there- 
fore, was at his lips when he inquired for his cousin. 
It was not without something like fear, and an appre- 
hension of disappointment, that he awaited her 
appearance; and he was secretly condemning him- 
self for the romantic folly which he had encouraged, 
when the door opened, and a creature came in, — 
less radiant, indeed, but more winning than his fancy 
had created, for the loveliness of earth and reality 
was about her. 

"Margaret," said Miss Trewbody, "do you re- 
member your cousin Leonard?" 

Before she could answer, Leonard had taken her 
hand. "'Tis a long while, Margaret, since we 
parted ! — ten years ! — But I have not forgotten the 
parting, — nor the blessed days of our childhood." 

She stood trembling like an aspen leaf, and looked 
wistfully in his face for a moment, then hung down 
her head, without power to utter a word in reply. 
But he felt her tears fall fast upon his hand, and felt 
also that she returned its pressure. 

Leonard had some difficulty to command himself, 
so as to bear a part in conversation with his aunt, 
and keep his eyes and his thoughts from wandering. 
He accepted, however, her invitation to stay and 



THE DOCTOR 1 97 

dine with her with undissembled satisfaction, and 
the pleasure was not a little heightened when she left 
the room to give some necessary orders in conse- 
quence. Margaret still sate trembling and in silence. 
He took her hand, pressed it to his lips, and said in 
a low, earnest voice, ''dear dear Margaret!" She 
raised her eyes, and fixing them upon him with one of 
those looks the perfect remembrance of which can 
never be effaced from the heart to which they have 
been addressed, repHed in a lower but not less earnest 
tone, "dear Leonard!" and from that moment their 
lot was sealed for time and for eternity. 

Chapter LXXV. 



MORE CONCERNING LOVE AND THE DREAM OF LIFE. 

Happy the bonds that hold ye ; 
Sure they be sweeter far than liberty. 
There is no blessedness but in such bondage ; 
Happy that happy chain ; such links are heavenly. 

Beaumont and Fletcher. 

I will not describe the subsequent interviews 
between Leonard and his cousin, short and broken 
but precious as they were ; nor that parting one in 
which hands were pKghted, with the sure and certain 
knowledge that hearts had been interchanged. 
Remembrance will enable some of my readers to por- 
tray the scene, and then perhaps a sigh may be 
heaved for the days that are gone : Hope will picture it 
to others, — and with them the sigh will be for the 
days that are to come. 

There was not that indefinite deferment of hope 
in this case at which the heart sickens. Leonard 
had been bred up in poverty from his childhood : a 
parsimonious allowance, grudgingly bestowed, had 



198 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

contributed to keep him frugal at College, by calling 
forth a pardonable if not a commendable sense of 
pride in aid of a worthier principle. He knew that 
he could rely upon himself for frugality, industry, 
and a cheerful as well as a contented mind. He had 
seen the miserable state of bondage in which Margaret 
existed with her Aunt, and his resolution was made to 
deliver her from that bondage as soon as he could 
obtain the smallest benefice on which it was possible 
for them to subsist. They agreed to live rigorously 
within their means, however poor, and put their trust 
in Providence. They could not be deceived in each 
other, for they had grown up together; and they 
knew that they were not deceived in themselves. 
Their love had the freshness of youth, but prudence 
and forethought were not wanting; the resolution 
which they had taken brought with it peace of mind, 
and no misgiving was felt in either heart when they 
prayed for a blessing upon their purpose. In reality 
it had already brought a blessing with it ; and this 
they felt; for love, when it deserves that name, 
produces in us what may be called a regeneration of 
its own, — a second birth, — dimly, but yet in some 
degree, resembling that which is effected by Divine 
Love when its redeeming work is accomplished in the 
soul. 

Leonard returned to Oxford happier than all this 
world's wealth or this world's honours could have 
made him. He had now a definite and attainable 
hope, — an object in life which gave to life itself a 
value. For Margaret, the world no longer seemed to 
her like the same earth which she had till then in- 
habited. Hitherto she had felt herself a forlorn 
and solitary creature, without a friend ; and the 
sweet sounds and pleasant objects of nature had im- 



THE DOCTOR 199 

parted as little cheerfulness to her as to the debtor 
who sees green fields in sunshine from his prison, and 
hears the lark singing at Hberty. Her heart was 
open now to all the exhilarating and all the softening 
influences of birds, fields, flowers, vernal suns, and 
melodious streams. She was subject to the same 
daily and hourly exercise of meekness, patience, and 
humility ; but the trial was no longer painful ; with 
love in her heart, and hope and sunshine in her 
prospect, she found even a pleasure in contrasting 
her present condition with that which was in store 
for her. 

In these our days every young lady holds the pen 
of a ready writer, and words flow from it as fast as 
it can indent its zigzag Hnes, according to the reformed 
system, of writing, — which said system improves 
handwritings by making them all aHke and all 
illegible. At that time women wrote better and 
spelt worse : but letter writing was not one of their 
accomplishments. It had not yet become one of the 
general pleasures and luxuries of life, — perhaps the 
greatest gratification which the progress of civiliza- 
tion has given us. There was then no mail coach to 
waft a sigh across the country at the rate of eight miles 
an hour. Letters came slowly and with long inter- 
vals between ; but when they came, the happiness 
which they imparted to Leonard and Margaret lasted 
during the interval, however long. To Leonard it 
was as an exhilarant and a cordial which rejoiced and 
strengthened him. He trod the earth with a lighter 
and more elated movement on the day when he 
received a letter from Margaret, as if he felt himself 
invested with an importance which he had never 
possessed till the happiness of another human being 
was inseparably associated with his own; 



200 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

So proud a thing it was for him to wear 

Love's golden chain, 
With which it is best freedom to be bound.^ 

Happy, indeed, if there be happiness on earth, as 
that same sweet poet says, is he, 

Who love enjoys, and placed hath his mind 
Where fairest virtues fairest beauties grace. 

Then in himself such store of worth doth find 
That he deserves to find so good a place.^ 

This was Leonard's case ; and when he kissed the 
paper, which her hand had pressed, it was with a con- 
sciousness of the strength and sincerity of his affec- 
tion, which at once rejoiced and fortified his heart. 
To Margaret his letters were like summer dew upon 
the herb that thirsts for such refreshment. When- 
ever they arrived, a head-ache became the cause or 
pretext for retiring earher than usual to her chamber, 
that she might weep and dream over the precious 
lines : — 

True gentle love is like the summer dew, 

Which faUs around when all is still and hush ; 
And falls unseen until its bright drops strew 

With odours, herb and flower and bank and bush. 
O love ! — when womanhood is in the flush, 

And man's a young and an unspotted thing, 
His first-breathed word and her half-conscious blush. 

Are fair as light in heaven, or flowers in spring.^ 

Chapter LXXVII. 



AN EARLY BEREAVEMENT. TRUE LOVE ITS OWN COMFORTER. 
A LONELY FATHER AND AN ONLY CHILD. 

Read ye that run the aweful truth, 

With which I charge mj?^ page ; 
A worm is in the bud of youth. 

And at the root of age. Cowper. 

^ Drummond. '^ Allan Cunningham. 



THE DOCTOR 20I 

Leonard was not more than eight and twenty 
when he obtained a living, a few miles from Doncaster. 
He took his bride with him to the vicarage. The 
house was as humble as the benefice, which was worth 
less than £50 a year ; but it was soon made the neatest 
cottage in the country round, and upon a happier 
dwelHng the sun never shone. A few acres of good 
glebe were attached to it ; and the garden was large 
enough to afford healthful and pleasurable employ- 
ment to its owners. The course of true love never 
ran more smoothly ; but its course was short. 

how this spring of love resembleth 
The uncertain glory of an April day, 

Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, 
And by and by a cloud takes all away ! ^ 

Little more than five years from the time of their 
marriage had elapsed, before a headstone in the adja- 
cent churchyard told where the remains of Margaret 
Bacon had been deposited in the 30th year of her age. 
When the stupor and the agony of that bereave- 
ment had passed away, the very intensity of Leonard's 
affection became a source of consolation. Margaret 
had been to him a purely ideal object during the 
years of his youth ; death had again rendered her 
such. Imagination had beautified and idoHzed her 
then ; faith sanctified and glorified her now. She 
had been to him on earth all that he had fancied, all 
that he had hoped, all that he had desired. She 
would again be so in heaven. And this second union 
nothing could impede, nothing could interrupt, noth- 
ing could dissolve. He had only to keep himself 
worthy of it by cherishing her memory, hallowing 
his heart to it while he performed a parent's duty to 

1 Shakespeare. 



202 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

their child ; and so doing to await his own sum- 
mons, which must one day come, which every day 
was brought nearer, and which any day might bring. 

— 'Tis the only discipline we are born for ; 
All studies else are but as circular lines, 
And death the centre where they must all meet.^ 

The same feeHng which from his childhood had 
refined Leonard's heart, keeping it pure and unde- 
filed, had also corroborated the natural strength of 
his character, and made him firm of purpose. It was 
a saying of Bishop Andrews that "good husbandry 
is good divinity;" "the truth whereof," says Fuller, 
"no wise man will deny." FrugaHty he had always 
practised as a needful virtue, and found that in an 
especial manner it brings with it its own reward. 
He now resolved upon scrupulously setting apart a 
fourth of his small income to make a provision for 
his child, in case of her surviving him, as in the 
natural course of things might be expected. If she 
should be removed before him, — for this was an 
event the possibiHty of which he always bore in 
mind, — he had resolved that whatever should have 
been accumulated with this intent, should be disposed 
of to some other pious purpose, — for such, within 
the limits to which his poor means extended, he 
properly considered this. And having entered on 
this prudential course with a calm reliance upon 
Providence in case his hour should come before that 
purpose could be accompHshed, he was without any 
earthly hope or fear, — those alone excepted, from 
which no parent can be free. 

The child had been christened Deborah after 
her maternal grandmother, for whom Leonard ever 
1 Massinger. 



THE DOCTOR 203 

gratefully retained a most affectionate and reveren- 
tial remembrance. She was a healthy, happy crea- 
ture in body and in mind ; at first 

— one of those little prating girls 

Of whom fond parents tell such tedious stories ; * 

afterwards, as she grew up, a favourite with the 
village school-mistress, and with the whole parish ; 
docile, good-natured, lively and yet considerate, always 
gay as a lark and busy as a bee. One of the pensive 
pleasures in which Leonard indulged was to gaze on 
her unperceived, and trace the hkeness to her mother. 

Oh Christ ! 
How that which was the life's life of our being, 
Can pass away, and we recall it thus ! ^ 

That resemblance which was strong in childhood 
lessened as the child grew up ; for Margaret's counte- 
nance had acquired a cast of meek melancholy dur- 
ing those years in which the bread of bitterness had 
been her portion; and when hope came to her, it 
was that ''hope deferred" which takes from the 
cheek its bloom, even when the heart, instead of being 
made sick, is sustained by it. But no unhappy cir- 
cumstances depressed the constitutional buoyancy 
of her daughter's spirits. Deborah brought into the 
world the happiest of all nature's endowments, an 
easy temper and a light heart. Resemblant therefore 
as the features were, the dissimilitude of expression 
was more apparent ; and when Leonard contrasted in 
thought the sunshine of hilarity that lit up his 
daughter's face, with the sort of moonlight loveliness 
which had given a serene and saint-Hke character 
to her mother's, he wished to persuade himself that 
^ Dryden. 2 Isaac Comnenus. 



204 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

as the early translation of the one seemed to have 
been thus prefigured, the other might be destined to 
live for the happiness of others till a good old age, 
while length of years in their course should ripen her 
for heaven. Chapter LXXIX. 



MR. BACONS PARSONAGE. CHRISTIAN RESIGNATION. TIME 
AND CHANGE. WILKIE AND THE MONK IN THE ESCURIAL. 

The idea of her life shall sweetly creep 

Into his study of imagination ; 

And every lovely organ of her life 

Shall come apparell'd in more precious habit, 

More moving delicate, and full of life, 

Into the eye and prospect of his soul, 

Than when she hved indeed. Shakespeare. 

In a Scotch village the Manse is sometimes the 
only good house, and generally it is the best ; almost, 
indeed, what in old times the Mansion used to be in 
an EngKsh one. In Mr. Bacon's parish, the vicarage, 
though humble as the benefice itself, was the neatest. 
The cottage in which he and Margaret passed their 
childhood had been remarkable for that comfort 
which is the result and the reward of order and neat- 
ness : and when the reunion which blessed them both 
rendered the remembrance of those years deHghtful, 
they returned in this respect to the way in which 
they had been trained up, practised the economy 
which they had learned there, and loved to think how 
entirely their course of Kfe, in all its circumstances, 
would be after the heart of that person, if she could 
behold it, whose memory they both with equal affec- 
tion cherished. After his bereavement it was one 
of the widower's pensive pleasures to keep everything 
in the same state as when Margaret was hving. Noth- 



THE DOCTOR 205 

ing was neglected that she used to do, or that she 
would have done. The flowers were tended as care- 
fully as if she were still to enjoy their fragrance and 
their beauty ; and the birds who came in winter for 
their crumbs were fed as duly for her sake, as they had 
formerly been by her hands. 

There was no superstition in this, nor weakness. 
Immoderate grief, if it does not exhaust itself by indul- 
gence, easily assumes the one character, or the other, 
or takes a type of insanity. But he had looked for 
consolation, where, when sincerely sought, it is always 
to be found ; and he had experienced that religion 
effects in a true behever all that philosophy professes, 
and more than all that mere philosophy can per- 
form. The wounds which stoicism would cauterize, 
rehgion heals. 

There is a resignation with which, it may be feared, 
most of ua deceive ourselves. To bear what must 
be borne, and submit to what cannot be resisted, is 
no more than what the unregenerate heart is taught 
by the instinct of animal nature. But to acquiesce 
in the aflSictive dispensations of Providence, — to 
make one's own will conform in all things to that of 
our Heavenly Father, — to say to him in the sincerity 
of faith, when we drink of the bitter cup, "Thy will 
be done I" — to bless the name of the Lord as much 
from the heart when He takes away, as when He 
gives, and with a depth of feehng of which, perhaps, 
none but the afflicted heart is capable, — this is the 
resignation which reHgion teaches, this the sacrifice 
which it requires.^ This sacrifice Leonard had made, 
and he felt that it was accepted. 

Severe, therefore, as his loss had been, and lasting 
as its effects were, it produced in him nothing hke a 

^ This passage was written when Southey was bowing his head 



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settled sorrow, nor even that melancholy which sor- 
row leaves behind. Gibbon has said of himself, 
that as a mere philosopher he could not agree with 
the Greeks, in thinking that those who die in their 
youth are favoured by the Gods : 

Ov ol 6eol (juXovcriv dTro6vT^crK€L veos.^ 

It was because he was "a mere philosopher," that 
he failed to perceive a truth which the rehgious 
heathen acknowledged, and which is so trivial, and 
of such practical value, that it may now be seen 
inscribed upon village tombstones. The Christian 
knows that "blessed are the dead which die in the 
Lord ; even so saith the Spirit." And the heart 
of the Christian mourner, in its deepest distress, 
hath the witness of the Spirit to that consolatory 
assurance. 

In this faith Leonard regarded his bereavement. 
His loss, he knew, had been Margaret's gain. What, 
if she had been summoned in the flower of her years, 
and from a state of connubial happiness which there 
had been nothing to disturb or to alloy? How soon 
might that flower have been bhghted, — how surely 
must it have faded ! how easily might that happiness 
have been interrupted by some of those evils which 
flesh is heir to ! And as the separation was to take 
place, how mercifully had it been appointed that he, 
who was the stronger vessel, should be the survivor ! 
Even for their child this was best, greatly as she 

under the sorest and saddest of his many troubles. He thus alludes 
to it in a letter to me, dated October 5, 1834. 

"On the next leaf is the passage of which I spoke in my letter 
from York. It belongs to an early chapter in the third volume; 
and very remarkable it is that it should have been written just at 
that time." Warter. 

^ He whom the gods love dies young. 



THE DOCTOR 207 

needed, and would need, a mother's care. His 
paternal solicitude would supply that care, as far as 
it was possible to supply it ; but had he been removed, 
mother and child must have been left to the mercy 
of Providence, without any earthly protector, or any 
means of support. 

For her to die was gain ; in him, therefore, it were 
sinful as well as selfish to repine, and of such selfish- 
ness and sin his heart acquitted him. If a wish could 
have recalled her to Hfe, no such wish would ever have 
by him been uttered, nor ever have by him been felt ; 
certain he was that he loved her too well to bring her 
again into this world of instability and trial. Upon 
earth there can be no safe happiness. 

Ah ! male Fortune devota est ara manenti ! 
Fallit, et hcec nullas accipit ara preces} 

All things here are subject to Time and Mutability : 

Quod tibi largd dedit Hora dextrd, 
Horn fiiraci rapiet sinistra} 

We must be in eternity before we can be secure 
against change. "The world," says Cowper, "upon 
which we close our eyes at night, is never the same 
with that on which we open them in the morning." 

It was to the perfect Order he should find in that 
state upon which he was about to enter, that the 
judicious Hooker looked forward at his death with 
placid and profound contentment. Because he had 
been employed in contending against a spirit of in- 
subordination and schism which soon proved fatal 
to his country ; and because his life had been passed 

^ Vainly is an altar dedicated to Fortune while she stays with us ! 
When she fails, this altar will receive no prayers. Wallius. 

^ What the Hour gave thee with its generous right hand the Hour 
will snatch from thee with its thievish left. Casimie, 



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under the perpetual discomfort of domestic discord, 
the happiness of Heaven seemed, in his estimation, 
to consist primarily in Order, as indeed in all human 
societies this is the first thing needful. The disci- 
pUne which Mr. Bacon had undergone was very- 
different in kind : what he delighted to think, was, 
that the souls of those whom death and redemption 
have made perfect, are in a world where there is no 
change, nor parting, where nothing fades, nothing 
passes away and is no more seen, but the good and 
the beautiful are permanent. 

Miser, chi speme in cosa mortal pone; 
Ma, chi non ve la pone ? ^ 

When Wilkie was in the Escurial, looking at Titian's 
famous picture of the Last Supper, in the Refectory 
there, an old Jeronomite said to him, "I have sat 
daily in sight of that picture for now nearly three- 
score years ; during that time my companions have 
dropped off, one after another, — all who were my 
seniors, all who were my contemporaries, and many, 
or most of those who were younger than myself ; 
more than one generation has passed away, and there 
the figures in the picture have remained unchanged ! 
I look at them till I sometimes think that they are 
the realities, and we but shadows ! " ^ 

I wish I could record the name of the Monk by 
whom that natural feeling was so feelingly and strik- 
ingly expressed. 

"The shows of things are better than themselves," 

^ Wretched is he who places his hope in mortal things ; but who 
does not place it there? Petrarch. 

' See the very beautiful lines of Wordsworth in the " Yarrow Re- 
visited." The affecting incident is introduced in " Lines on a Por- 
trait." Warter. 



THE DOCTOR 209 

says the author of the Tragedy of Nero, whose name 
also I could wish had been forthcoming ; and the 
classical reader will remember the lines of Sophocles : 

' Opcii yap T7/u,as ovBkv ovras aAAo, irXrjv. 
El'ScoA', ocroiTTcp ^u)fjiev, rj KOv<f)r)v (XKidv.^ 

These are reflections which should make us think 

Of that same time when no more change shall be, 
But stedfast rest of all things, firmly stayd 
Upon the pillars of Eternity, 
That is contraire to mutability ; 
For all that moveth doth in change delight : 
But thenceforth all shall rest eternally 
With Him that is the God of Sabaoth hight, 
O that great Sabaoth God grant me that sabbath's sight.^ 

Chapter XCVII. 



A REMARKABLE EXAMPLE, SHOWING THAT A WISE MAN, WHEN 
HE RISES IN THE MORNING, LITTLE KNOWS WHAT HE MAY DO 
BEFORE NIGHT. 

— Now I love. 
And so as in so short a time I may ; 
Yet so as time shall never break that so. 
And therefore so accept of Elinor. 

Robert Greene. 

One summer evening the Doctor on his way back 
from a visit in that direction, stopped, as on such 
opportunities he usually did, at Mr. Bacon's wicket, 
and looked in at the open casement to see if his 
friends were within. Mr. Bacon was sitting there 
alone, with a book open on the table before him ; and 
looking round when he heard the horse stop, "Come 
in Doctor," said he, "if you have a few minutes to 
spare. You were never more welcome." 

^ I see that we are naught but images, all we who live, or an empty 
shadow. Sophocles. ^ Spenser. 



2IO SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

The Doctor replied, "I hope nothing ails either 
Deborah or yourself?" "No," said Mr. Bacon, 
"God be thanked ! but something has occurred which 
concerns both." 

When the Doctor entered the room, he perceived 
that the wonted serenity of his friend's countenance 
was overcast by a shade of melancholy thought; 
"Nothing," said he, "I hope has happened to dis- 
tress you?" — "Only to disturb us," was the reply, 
"Most people would probably think that we ought 
to consider it a piece of good fortune. One who 
would be thought a good match for her, has pro- 
posed to marry Deborah." 

"Indeed!" said the Doctor; "and who is he?" 
feeling, as he asked the question, an unusual warmth 
in his face. 

"Joseph Hebblethwaite, of the Willows. He broke 
his mind to me this morning, saying that he thought 
it best to speak with me before he made any advances 
himself to the young woman : indeed he had had no 
opportunity of so doing, for he had seen little of her ; 
but he had heard enough of her character to believe 
that she would make him a good wife ; and this, he 
said, was all he looked for, for he was well to do in 
the world." 

"And what answer did you make to this matter- 
of-fact way of proceeding?" 

"I told him that I commended the very proper 
course he had taken, and that I was obliged to him 
for the good opinion of my daughter which he was 
pleased to entertain : that marriage was an affair 
in which I should never attempt to direct her incli- 
nations, being confident that she would never give 
me cause to oppose them ; and that I would talk with 
her upon the proposal, and let him know the result. 



THE DOCTOR 211 

As soon as I mentioned it to Deborah, she coloured 
up to her eyes; and with an angry look, of which I 
did not think those eyes had been capable, she de- 
sired me to tell him that he had better lose no time 
in looking elsewhere, for his thinking of her was of 
no use. 'Do you know any ill of him?' said I; 
'No,' she replied, 'but I never heard any good, 
and that's ill enough. And I do not like his looks.'" 

"Well said, Deborah!" cried the Doctor: clapping 
his hands so as to produce a sonorous token of satis- 
faction. 

"'Surely, my child,' said I, 'he is not an ill-looking 
person?' 'Father,' she replied, 'you know he looks 
as if he had not one idea in his head to keep company 
with another.'" 

"Well said, Deborah!" repeated the Doctor. 

"Why Doctor, do you know any ill of him?" 

"None. But as Deborah says, I know no good; 
and if there had been any good to be known, it must 
have come within my knowledge. I cannot help 
knowing who the persons are to whom the peasantry 
in my rounds look with respect and good will, and 
whom they consider their friends as well as their 
betters. And in like manner, I know who they are from 
whom they never expect either courtesy or kindness." 

"You are right, my friend; and Deborah is right. 
Her answer came from a wise heart; and I was not 
sorry that her determination was so promptly made, 
and so resolutely pronounced. But I wish, if it had 
pleased God, the offer had been one which she could 
have accepted with her own willing consent, and with 
my full approbation." 

"Yet," said the Doctor, "I have often thought how 
sad a thing it would be for you ever to part with her." 

"Far more sad will it be for me to leave her un- 



212 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

protected, as it is but too likely that, in the ordinary 
course of nature, I one day shall ; and as any day in 
that same ordinary course, I so possibly may ! Our 
best intentions, even when they have been most pru- 
dentially formed, fail often in their issue. I meant 
to train up Deborah in the way she should go, by fit- 
ting her for that state of life in which it had pleased 
God to place her, so that she might have made a good 
wife for some honest man in the humbler walks of 
life, and have been happy with him." 

"And how was it possible," replied the Doctor, 
"that you could have succeeded better? Is she 
not qualified to be a good man's wife in any rank? 
Her manner would not do discredit to a mansion; 
her management would make a farm prosperous, or 
a cottage comfortable; and for her principles, and 
temper and cheerfulness, they would render any 
home a happy one." 

"You have not spoken too highly in her praise, 
Doctor. But as she has from her childhood been 
all in all to me, there is a danger that I may have 
become too much so to her ; and that while her habits 
have properly been made conformable to our poor 
means, and her poor prospects, she has been accus- 
tomed to a way of thinking, and a kind of conversa- 
tion, which have given her a distaste for those whose 
talk is only of sheep and of oxen, and whose thoughts 
never get beyond the range of their every day em- 
ployments. In her present circle, I do not think 
there is one man with whom she might otherwise 
have had a chance of settling in life, to whom she 
would not have the same intellectual objections as to 
Joseph Hebblethwaite : though I am glad that the 
moral objection was that which first instinctively 
occurred to her. 



THE DOCTOR 213 

"I wish it were otherwise, both for her sake and 
my own ; for hers, because the present separation 
would have more than enough to compensate it, and 
would in its consequences mitigate the evil of the final 
one, whenever that may be ; for my own, because I 
should then have no cause whatever to render the 
prospect of dissolution otherwise than welcome, but 
be as wilHng to die as to sleep. It is not owing to any 
distrust in Providence, that I am not thus willing 
now, — God forbid ! But if I gave heed to my own 
feelings, I should think that I am not long for this 
world ; and surely it were wise to remove, if possible, 
the only cause that makes me fear to think so." 

"Are you sensible of any symptoms that can lead 
to such an apprehension?" said the Doctor. 

"Of nothing that can be called a symptom. I am 
to all appearance in good health, of sound body and 
mind ; and you know how unlikely my habits are to 
occasion any disturbance in either. But I have 
indefinable impressions, — sensations they might al- 
most be called, — which as I cannot but feel them, 
so I cannot but regard them." 

"Can you not describe these sensations?" 

" No better than by saying, that they hardly amount 
to sensations, and are indescribable." 

"Do not," said the Doctor, "I entreat you, give 
way to any feelings of this kind. They may lead to 
consequences, which, without shortening or endanger- 
ing life, would render it anxious and burthensome, and 
destroy your usefulness and your comfort." 

"I have this feeling, Doctor; and you shall pre- 
scribe for it, if you think it requires either regimen 
or physic. But at present you will do me more good 
by assisting me to procure for Deborah such a situa- 
tion as she must necessarily look for on the event of 



214 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

my death. What I have laid by, even if it should be 
most advantageously disposed of, would afford her 
only a bare subsistence ; it is a resource in case of 
sickness, but while in health, it would never be her 
wish to eat the bread of idleness. You may have 
opportunities of learning whether any lady within 
the circle of your practice wants a young person in 
whom she might confide, either as an attendant upon 
herself, or to assist in the management of her chil- 
dren, or her household. You may be sure this is not 
the first time that I have thought upon the subject ; 
but the circumstance which has this day occurred, 
and the feeling of which I have spoken, have pressed 
it upon my consideration. And the inquiry may 
better be made and the step taken while it is a matter 
of foresight, than when it has become one of neces- 
sity." 

"Let me feel your pulse!" 

"You will detect no other disorder there," said Mr. 
Bacon, holding out his arm as he spake, "than what 
has been caused by this conversation, and the decla- 
ration of a purpose, which though for some time per- 
pended, I had never till now fully acknowledged to 
myself." 

"You have never then mentioned it to Deborah?" 

"In no other way than by sometimes incidentally 
speaking of the way of fife which would be open to 
her, in case of her being unmarried at my death." 

"And you have made up your mind to part with 
her?" 

"Upon a clear conviction that I ought to do so; 
that it is best for herself and me." 

"Well then, you will allow me to converse with 
her first, upon a different subject. — You will permit 
me to see whether I can speak more successfully 



THE DOCTOR 21 5 

for myself, than you have done for Joseph Hebble- 
thwaite. — Have I your consent?" 

Mr. Bacon rose in great emotion, and taking his 
friend's hand pressed it fervently and tremulously. 
Presently they heard the wicket open, and Deborah 
came in. 

''I dare say, Deborah," said her father, composing 
himself, "you have been telhng Betsy Allison of the 
advantageous offer that you have this day refused." 

"Yes," repKed Deborah; "and what do you 
think she said? That little as she likes him, rather 
than I should be thrown away upon such a man, she 
could almost make up her mind to marry him her- 
self." 

"And I," said the Doctor, "rather than such a 
man should have you would marry you myself." 

"Was not I right in refusing him, Doctor?" 

"So right, that you never pleased me so well 
before ; and never can please me better, — uinless 
you will accept of me in his stead." 

She gave a Uttle start, and looked at him half 
incredulously, and half angrily withal ; as if what he 
had said was too Hght in its manner to be serious, 
and yet too serious in its import to be spoken in jest. 
But when he took her by the hand, and said, "Will 
you, dear Deborah?" with a pressure, and in a tone 
which left no doubt of his earnest meaning, she cried, 
"Father, what am I to say? speak for me!" — 
"Take her, my friend!" said Mr. Bacon; "My 
blessing be upon you both. And if it be not pre- 
sumptuous to use the words, — let me say for my- 
self, 'Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in 

P^^^^'"' Chapter CIV. 



2l6 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 



A WORD OF NOBS, AND AN ALLUSION TO C^SAR. SOME CIRCUM- 
STANCES RELATING TO THE DOCTOR'S SECOND LOVE, WHEREBY 
THOSE OF HIS THIRD AND LAST ARE ACCOUNTED FOR. 

Un mal que se entra por medio los ojos, 

Y va se derecho hasta el corazon; 

Alii en ser llegado se torna aficion, 
Y da mil pesares, plazeres y enojos: 
Causa alegrias, tristezas, antojos; 

Haze llorar, y haze reir, 

Haze cantar, y haze planir, 
Da pensamientos dos mil a manojos} 

Question de Amor. 

"Nobs," said the Doctor, as he mounted and rode 
away from Mr. Bacon's garden gate, "when I alighted 
and fastened thee to that wicket, I thought as little 
of what was to befal me then, and what I was about 
to do, as thou knowest of it now." 

Man has an inward voice as well as an "inward 
eye," ^ a voice distinct from that of conscience. It is 
the companion, if not "the bHss of soKtude;"^ and 
though he sometimes employs it to deceive himself, 
it gives him good counsel perhaps quite as often, 
calls him to account, reproves him for having left 
unsaid what he ought to have said, or for having said 
what he ought not to have said, reprehends or ap- 
proves, admonishes or encourages. On this occa- 
sion it was a joyful and gratulatory voice, with which 
the Doctor spake mentally, first to Nobs and after- 
wards to himself, as he rode back to Doncaster. 

1 A malady that enters through the eyes and goes directly to the 
heart. Having arrived at its inmost chamber it turns into affection, 
and causes a thousand sorrows, pleasures and pains. It produces 
joy, sadness and longing ; it makes you weep and laugh, sing and 
wail ; it gives rise to two thousand reflections and more. 

^ Wordsworth. 



THE DOCTOR 217 

By this unuttered address the reader would per- 
ceive, if he should haply have forgotten what was 
intimated in some of the ante-initial chapters, and 
in the first post-initial one, that the Doctor had a 
horse, named Nobs ; and the question Who was 
Nobs, would not be necessary, if this were all that 
was to be said concerning him. There is much to 
be said ; the tongue that could worthily express his 
merits had need be like the pen of a ready writer ; 
though I will not say of him as Berni or Boiardo has 
said of 

— quel valeroso ^ bel destriero^ 

Argalia's horse, Rubicano, that 

Un che volesse dir lodando il vero, 
Bisogno aria di parlar piu di umano.^ 

At present, however, I shall only say this in his praise, 
he was altogether unhke the horse of whom it 
was said he had only two faults, that of being hard 
to catch, and that of being good for nothing when he 
was caught. For whether in stable or in field, Nobs 
would come like a dog to his master's call. There 
was not a better horse for the Doctor's purpose in 
all England ; no, nor in all Christendom ; no, nor in 
all Houyhnhnmdom, if that country had been searched 
to find one. 

Ccesarem vehis, said Cassar to the Egyptian boat- 
man. But what was that which the Egyptian boat 
carried, compared to what Nobs bore upon that 
saddle to which constant use had given its polish 
bright and brown ? 

^ This brave and fair courser. 

^ One who would speak the truth in his praise would need elo- 
quence more than human. 



2l8 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

Virtutem solidi pectoris hospitam 
Idem portat equus, qui dominum} 

Nobs therefore carried — all that is in these vol- 
umes ; yea, and as all future generations were, 
according to Madame Bourignon, actually as well as 
potentially, contained in Adam, — all editions and 
translations of them, however numerous. 

But on that evening he carried something of more 
importance ; for on the hfe and weal of his rider 
there depended from that hour, as far as its depend- 
ence was upon anything earthly, the happiness 
of one of the best men in the world, and of a daughter 
who was not unworthy of such a father. If the Doc- 
tor had been thrown from his horse and killed, an 
hour or two earlier, the same day, it would have been 
a dreadful shock both to Deborah and Mr. Bacon ; 
and they would always have regretted the loss of one 
whose company they enjoyed, whose character they 
respected, and for whom they entertained a feehng 
of more than ordinary regard. But had such a 
casualty occurred now, it would have been the severest 
affliction that could have befallen them. 

Yet till that hour Deborah had never thought of 
Dove as a husband, nor Dove of Deborah as a wife 
— that is, neither had ever looked at the possibility 
of their being one day united to each other in that 
relation. Deborah Hked him, and he Hked her ; and 
beyond this sincere Hking neither of them for a mo- 
ment dreamed that the inclination would ever pro- 
ceed. They had not fallen in love with each other; nor 
had they run in love, nor walked into it, nor been led 
into it, nor entrapped into it ; nor had they caught it. 

1 The same horse that bears the master bears the virtue that in- 
habits the firm breast. Casimir. 



THE DOCTOR 219 

How then came they to be in love at last? The 
question may be answered by an incident which Mr. 
John Davis relates in his Travels of Four Years and 
a Half in the United States of America. The traveller 
was making his way "faint and wearily" on foot to 
a place called by the strange name of Frying Pan, — 
for the Americans have given all sorts of names, 
except fitting ones, to the places which they have 
settled, or discovered, and their Australian kinsmen 
seem to be following the same absurd and inconven- 
ient course. It will occasion, hereafter, as much 
confusion as the sameness of Mahommedan proper 
names, in all ages and countries, causes in the history 
of all Mahommedan nations. Mr. Davis had walked 
till he was tired without seeing any sign of the place 
at which he expected long before to have arrived. 
At length he met a lad in the wilderness, and asked 
him, *'how far, my boy, is it to Frying Pan?" The 
boy replied, "you be in the Pan now." 

So it was with the Doctor and with Deborah ; — 
they found themselves in love, as much to their sur- 
prize as it was to the traveller when he found himself 
in the Pan, and much more to their satisfaction. 
And upon a little after reflection they both perceived 
how they came to be so. 

There's a chain of causes 
Link'd to efifects, — invincible necessity 
That whate'er is, could not but so have been.* 

Into such questions, however, I enter not. "Nolo 
altum sapere," they be matters above my capacity : 
the Cobler's check shall never Hght on my head, 
"Ne sutor ultra crepidam." ^ Opportunity, which 
makes thieves,^ makes lovers also, and is the greatest 

* Dryden. 2 Thomas Lodge. 

' Tilfald gjor Tjufen. Swedish proverb. Warter. 



2 20 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

of all match-makers. And when opportunity came, 
the Doctor, 

Per ubbidir chi sempre uhbidir debbe 
La mente^ 

acted promptly. Accustomed as he was to weigh 
things of moment in the balance, and hold it with as 
even and as nice a hand, as if he were compounding 
a prescription on which the Hfe of a patient might 
depend, he was no shillishallier, nor ever wasted a 
precious minute in pro-and-conning, when it was 
necessary at once to decide and act. 

Chi ha tempo, e tempo aspetta, il tempo perde} 

His first love, as the reader will remember, came by 
inoculation, and was taken at first sight. This third 
and last, he used to say, came by inoculation also ; 
but it was a more remarkable case, for eleven years 
elapsed before there was an appearance of his having 
taken the infection. How it happened that an ac- 
quaintance of so many years, and which at its very 
commencement had led to confidence, and esteem, 
and famiharity, and friendship, should have led no 
farther, may easily be explained. Dove, when he 
first saw Deborah, was in love with another person. 

He had attended poor Lucy Bevan from the eight- 
eenth year of her age, when a tendency to consump- 
tion first manifested itself in her, till the twenty-fifth, 
when she sunk under that slow and insidious malady. 
She, who for five of those seven years, fancied herself 
during every interval, or mitigation of the disease, 
restored to health, or in the way of recovery, had 
fixed her affections upon him. And he who had 

* To obey him whom reason must always obey. PuLCi. 
2 Who has tune and waits for time, loses time. Serafino da 
L'Aquila. 



THE DOCTOR 221 

gained those affections by his kind and careful at- 
tendance upon a case of which he soon saw cause to 
apprehend the fatal termination, becoming aware 
of her attachment as he became more and more mourn- 
fully convinced that no human skill could save her, 
found himself unawares engaged in a second passion, 
as hopeless as his first. That had been wilful; this 
was equally against his will and his judgment : that 
had been a folly, this was an affliction. And the only 
consolation which he found in it was, that the con- 
sciousness of loving and of being beloved, which 
made him miserable, was a happiness to her as long 
as she retained a hope of hfe, or was capable of feel- 
ing satisfaction in anything relating to this world. 
CaroHne Bowles, whom no authoress or author has 
ever surpassed in truth, and tenderness, and sanctity 
of feeHng, could relate such a story as it ought to be 
related, — if stories which in themselves are purely 
painful ought ever to be told. I will not attempt 
to tell it : — for I wish not to draw upon the reader's 
tears, and have none to spare for it myself. 

This unhappy attachment, though he never spoke 
of it, being always but too certain in what it must 
end, was no secret to Mr. Bacon and his daughter: 
and when death had dissolved the earthly tie, it 
seemed to them, as it did to himself, that his affec- 
tions were wedded to the dead. It was Hkely that 
the widower should think so, judging of his friend's 
heart by his own. 

Sorrow and Time will ever paint too well 

The lost when hopeless, all things loved in vain.^ 

His feehngs upon such a point had been expressed 
for him by a most proHfic and unequal writer, whose 

^ Robert Landor. 



222 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

poems, more perhaps than those of any other English 
author, deserve to be carefully winnowed, the grain, 
which is of the best quality, being now lost amid the 
heap of chaff. 

Lord keep me faithful to the trust 
Which my dear spouse reposed in me : 

To her now dead, preserve me just 
In all that should performed be. 

For tho' our being man and wife 

Extendeth only to this life, 

Yet neither life nor death should end 

The being of a faithful friend.^ 

The knowledge that the Doctor's heart was thus 
engaged at the time of their first acquaintance, had 
given to Deborah's intercourse with him an easy 
frankness which otherwise might perhaps not have 
been felt, and could not have been assumed ; and the 
sister-Hke feeling into which this had grown under- 
went no change after Lucy Bevan's death. He 
meantime saw that she was so happy with her father, 
and supposed her father's happiness so much depended 
upon her, that to have entertained a thought of sepa- 
rating them (even if the suitableness of such a mar- 
riage in other respects had ever entered into his imagi- 
nation), would have seemed to him Kke a breach of 
friendship. Yet, if Mr. Bacon had died before he 
opened his mind to the Doctor upon occasion of 
Joseph Hebblethwaite's proposal, it is probable that 
one of the first means of consolation which would 
have occurred to him, would have been to offer the 
desolate daughter a home, together with his hand; 
so well was he acquainted with her domestic merits, 
so highly did he esteem her character, and so truly 

^ Wither. 



THE DOCTOR 223 

did he admire the gifts with which Nature had en- 
dowed her, — 

— her sweet humour 
That was as easy as a calm, and peaceful ; 
All her afifections, like the dews on roses, 
Fair as the flowers themselves, as sweet and gentle.* 

Chapter CV. 



A TRANSITIONAL CHAPTER, WHEREIN THE AUTHOR COMPARES 
HIS BOOK TO AN OMNIBUS AND A SHIP, QUOTES SHAKESPEARE, 
MARCO ANTONIO DE CAMOS, QUARLES, SPENSER, AND SOMEBODY 
ELSE, AND INTRODUCES HIS READERS TO SOME OF THE HEATHEN 
GODS, WITH WHOM PERHAPS THEY WERE NOT ACQUAINTED 
BEFORE. 

We are not to grudge such interstitial and transitional matter 
as may promote an easy connection of parts and an elastic 
separation of them, and keep the reader's mind upon springs 

Henry Taylor's Statesman. 

Dear impatient readers, — you whom I know and 
who do not know me, — and you who are equally 
impatient, but whom I cannot call equally dear, 
because you are totally strangers to me in my out-of- 
cog character, — you who would have had me hurry 
on 

In motion of no less celerity 
Than that of thought, — ^ 

you will not wonder, nor perhaps will you blame 
me now, that I do not hasten to the wedding-day. 
The day on which Deborah left her father's house was 
the saddest that she had ever known till then; nor 
was there one of the bridal party who did not feel 
that this was the first of those events, inevitable and 

' Beaumont and Fletcher. 2 Shakespeare. 



224 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

mournful all, by which their little circle would be 
lessened, and his or her manner of Hfe or of existence 
changed. 

There is no checking the course of time. When 
the shadow on Hezekiah's dial went back, it was in 
the symbol only that the miracle was wrought : 
the minutes in every other horologe held their due 
course. But as Opifex of this opus, I, when it seems 
good unto me, may take the hour-glass from Time's 
hand and let it rest at a stand-still, till I think fit 
to turn it and set the sands again in motion. You 
who have got into this my omnibus, know that like 
other omnibuses, its speed is to be regulated, not ac- 
cording to your individual, and perhaps contrariant 
wishes, but by my discretion. 

Moreover, I am not bound to ply with this omni- 
bus only upon a certain hne. In that case there would 
be just cause of complaint, if you were taken out of 
your road. 

Mas estorva y desabre en el camino 
Una pequena legua de desvio 
Que la Jornada larga de contino} 

Whoever has at any time lost his way upon a long 
journey can bear testimony to the truth of what the 
Reverend Padre Maestro Fray Marco Antonio de 
Camos says in those Unes. (I will tell you hereafter, 
reader, (for it is worth telling,) why that namesake 
of the Triumvir, when he wrote the poem from whence 
the hnes are quoted, had no thoughts of dedicating 
it, as he afterwards did, to D. Juan Pimentel y de 
Requesens.) But you are in no danger of being 
bewildered, or driven out of your way. It is not in a 

' On a journey a little league out of the way annoys and disturbs 
one more than a long day's travel in the direct route. 



THE DOCTOR 225 

stage coach that you have taken your place with me, 
to be conveyed to a certain point, and within a cer- 
tain time, under such an expectation on your part, 
and such an engagement on mine. We will drop 
the metaphor of the omnibus, — observing, however, 
by the bye, which is the same thing in common par- 
lance as by the way, though critically there may seem 
to be a difference, for by the bye might seem to denote 
a collateral remark, and by the way a direct one; 
observing, however, as I said, that as Dexter called 
his work, or St. Jerome called it for him, Omnimoda 
Historia, so might this opus be not improperly denom- 
inated. You have embarked with me, not for a 
definite voyage, but for an excursion on the water ; 
and not in a steamer, nor in a galley, nor in one of 
the post-office packets, nor in a man-of-war, nor in a 
merchant- vessel ; but in 

A ship that's mann'd 
With labouring Thoughts, and steer'd by Reason's hand. 
My Will's the seaman's card whereby she sails ; 
My just Affections are the greater sails, 
The top sail is my fancy.^ 

Sir Guyon was not safer in Phaedria's "gondelay 
bedecked trim" than thou art on "this wide inland 
sea," in my ship 

That knows her port and thither sails by aim ; 
Ne care, ne fear I how the wind do blow ; 
Or whether swift I wend, or whether slow. 
Both slow and swift alike do serve my turn.^ 

My turn is served for the present, and yours also. 
The question who was Mrs. Dove? propounded for 
future solution in the second Chapter P. I., and for 
immediate consideration at the conclusion of the 71st 

^ QuARLES : mutatis mutandis. " Spensee. 

Q 



2 26 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

Chapter and the beginning of the 72nd, has been 
sufficiently answered. You have been made ac- 
quainted with her birth, parentage, and education; 
and you may rest assured that if the Doctor had set 
out upon a tour, Hke Coelebs, in search of a wife, he 
could never have found one who would in all respects 
have suited him better. What Shakespeare says of 
the Dauphin and the Lady Blanch might seem to 
have been said with a second sight of this union : 

Such as she is 
Is this our Doctor, every way complete; 
If not complete, O say, he is not she : 
And she again wants nothing, to name want, 
If want it be not, that she is not he. 
He is the half part of a blessed man. 
Left to be finished by such a she ; 
And she a fair divided excellence 
Whose fullness of perfection lies in him. 

You would wish me perhaps to describe her person. 
Sixty years had "written their defeatures in her 
face" before I became acquainted with her; yet by 
what those years had left methinks I could conceive 
what she had been in her youth. Go to your looking- 
glasses, young ladies, — and you will not be so well able 
to imagine by what you see there, how you will look 
when you shall have shaken hands with Three-score. 

One of the Elizabethan minor-poets, speaking of 
an ideal beauty, says. 

Into a slumber then I fell, 

When fond Imagination 
Seemed to see, but could not tell. 

Her feature, or her fashion. 
But even as babes in dreams do smile, 

And sometimes fall a-weeping. 
So I awaked, as wise this while, 

As when I fell a-sleeping. 



THE DOCTOR 227 

Just as unable should I feel myself were I to at- 
tempt a description from what Mrs. Dove was when 
I knew her, of what Deborah Bacon might be sup- 
posed to have been, — just as unable as this dreaming 
rhymer should I be, and you would be no whit the 
wiser. What the disposition was which gave her 
face its permanent beauty you may know by what has 
already been said. But this I can truly say of her 
and of her husband, that if they had lived in the time 
of the Romans when Doncaster was called Danum, 
and had been of what was then the Roman religion, 
and had been married, as consequently they would 
have been, with the rites of classical Paganism, it 
would have been believed both by their neighbours 
and themselves that their nuptial offerings had been 
benignly received by the god Domicius and the 
goddesses Maturna and Gamelia ; and no sacrifice 
to Viriplaca would ever have been thought necessary 
in that household. Chapter CX. 



DIFFERENCE OF OPINION BETWEEN THE DOCTOR AND NICHOLAS 
CONCERNING THE HIPPOGONY OR ORIGIN OF THE FOAL DROPPED 
IN THE PRECEDING CHAPTER. 

— his birth day, the eleventh of June 
When the Apostle Barnaby the bright 
Unto our year doth give the longest light. 

Ben Jonson. 

"It's as fine a foal as ever was dropped," said 
Nicholas; — "but I should as soon thought of 
dropping one myself!" 

"If thou hadst, Nicholas," replied the Doctor, 
"'twould have been a foal with longer ears, and a 
cross upon the shoulders. But I am heartily glad 
that it has happened to the Mare rather than to 



2 28 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

thee ; for in the first place thou wouldst hardly have 
got so well through it, as, with all my experience, I 
should have been at a loss how to have rendered thee 
any assistance ; and secondly, Nicholas, I should 
have been equally at a loss how to account for the 
circumstance, which certainly never could have been 
accounted for in so satisfactory a manner. The 
birth of this extraordinary foal supports a fact which 
the wise ancients have attested, and the moderns in 
their presumptuous ignorance have been pleased to 
disbeheve ; it also agrees with a notion which I have 
long been disposed to entertain. But had it been thy 
case instead of the Mare's it would have been to no 
purpose except to contradict all facts and confound 
all notions." 

"As for that matter," answered Nicholas, "all my 
notions are struck in a heap. You bought that Mare 
on the 29th of July, by this token that it was my 
birth-day, and I said she would prove a lucky one. 
One, — two, — three, — four, — five, — six, — seven, 
— eight, — nine, — ten, — " he continued, counting 
upon his fingers, — "ten Kalendar months, and 
to-day the eleventh of June ; — in all that time I'll 
be sworn she has never been nearer a horse than to 
pass him on the road. It must have been the Devil's 
doing, and I wish he never did worse. However, 
Master, I hope you'll sell him, for, in spite of his 
looks, I should never like to trust my precious limbs 
upon the back of such a misbegotten beast." 

" f/wbegotten, Nicholas," repHed the Doctor; 
"wwbegotten, — or rather begotten by the winds, — 
for so with every appearance of probability we may 
fairly suppose him to have been." 

"The Winds!" said Nicholas. —He lifted up the 
Uds of his little eyes as far as he could strain them, 



THE DOCTOR 229 

and breathed out a whistle of a half minute long, 
beginning in C alt and running down two whole 
octaves. 

"It was common in Spain," pursued Dr. Dove, 
"and consequently may have happened in our less 
genial climate, but this is the first instance that has 
ever been clearly observed. I well remember," he 
continued, "that last July was peculiarly fine. The 
wind never varied more than from South South East 
to South West ; the little rain which fell descended in 
gentle, balmy showers, and the atmosphere never 
could have been more full of the fecundating prin- 
ciple." 

That our friend really attached any credit to this 
fanciful opinion of the Ancients is what I will not 
affirm, nor perhaps would he himself have affirmed it. 
But Henry More, the Platonist, Milton's friend, un- 
doubtedly believed it. After quoting the well-known 
passage upon this subject in the Georgics, and a 
verse to the same effect from the Funics, he adds, 
that you may not suspect it " to be only the levity and 
credulity of Poets to report such things, I can inform 
you that St. Austin, and Solinus the historian, write 
the same of a race of horses in Cappadocia. Nay, 
which is more to the purpose. Columella and Varro, 
men expert in rural affairs, assert this matter for a 
most certain and known truth." Pliny also affirms 
it as an undoubted fact : the foals of the Wind, he 
says, were exceedingly swift, but short-lived, never 
outliving three years. And the Lampongs of Su- 
matra, according to Marsden, believe at this time 
that the Island Engano is inhabited entirely by 
females, whose progeny are all children of the Wind. 

Chapter CXXXVII. 



230 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

OBSOLETE ANTICIPATIONS ; BEING A LEAF OUT OF AN OLD AL- 
MANAC WHICH, LIKE OTHER OLD ALMANACS, THOUGH OUT OF 
DATE IS NOT OUT OF USE. 

If 

You play before me, I shall often look on you, 

I give you that warning beforehand. 

Take it not ill, my masters, I shall laugh at you, 

And truly when I am least offended with you ; 

It is my humour. MmDLETON. 

When St. Thomas Aquinas was asked in what 
manner a man might best become learned, he an- 
swered, " by reading one book ; " "meaning," says 
Bishop Taylor, "that an understanding entertained 
with several objects is intent upon neither, and profits 
not." Lord Holland's poet, the proHfic Lope de Vega, 
tells us to the same purport : 

Que es estudiante notable 
El que lo es de un libro solo. 
Que quando no estavan llenos 
De tantos libros agenos, 
Como van dexando atras, 
Sabian los hombres mas 
Porque estudiavan en menos} 

The homo unius libri is indeed proverbially formi- 
dable to all conversational figurantes. Like your 
sharp-shooter, he knows his piece perfectly, and is 
sure of his shot. I would therefore modestly insin- 
uate to the reader what infinite advantages would be 
possessed by that fortunate person who shall be 
the homo hujus libri. 

According to the Lawyers the King's eldest son is 
for certain purposes of full age as soon as he is born, 

^ The true student is he who is the student of a single book. For 
when they were not full of so many strange books as they now leave 
traiUng behind them, men knew more because they studied in less. 



THE DOCTOR 231 

— great being the mysteries of Law ! I will not 
assume that in like manner hie liber is at once to ac- 
quire maturity of fame; for fame, like the oak, is 
not the product of a single generation ; and a new book 
in its reputation is but as an acorn, the full growth of 
which can be known only by posterity. The Doctor 
will not make so great a sensation upon its first 
appearance as Mr. Southey's Wat Tyler, or the first 
two cantos of Don Juan ; still less will it be talked of 
so universally as the murder of Mr. Weire. Talked 
of, however, it will be, widely, largely, loudly and 
lengthily talked of ; lauded and vituperated, vilified 
and exttUed, heartily abused, and no less heartily 
admired. 

Thus much is quite certain, that before it has been 
published a week, eight persons will be named as 
having written it; and these eight positive lies will 
be affirmed each as positive truths on positive knowl- 
edge. 

Within the month Mr. Woodbee will write to one 
Marquis, one Earl, two Bishops, and two Reviewers- 
Major, assuring them that he is not the Author. 
Mr. Sligo will cautiously avoid making any such 
declaration, and will take occasion significantly to 
remark upon the exceeding impropriety of sa}dng 
to any person that a work which has been published 
anonymously is supposed to be his. He will observe 
also, that it is altogether unwarrantable to ask any 
one, under such circumstances, whether the report 
be true. Mr. Blueman's opinion of the book will be 
asked by four-and-twenty female correspondents, all 
of the order of the stocking. 

Professor Wilson will give it his hearty praise. 
Sir Walter Scott will deny that he has any hand in it. 
Mr. Coleridge will smile if he is asked the question. 



232 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

It if be proposed to Sir Humphry Davy he will smile 
too, and perhaps blush also. The Laureate will 
observe a careless silence; Mr. Wordsworth a dig- 
nified one. And Professor Person, if he were not 
gone where his Greek is of no use to him, would accept 
credit for it, though he would not claim it. 

The Opium Eater, while he peruses it, will doubt 
whether there is a book in his hand, or whether he 
be not in a dream of intellectual delight. 

"My little more than nothing " Jeffrey the second, 
— (for of the small Jeffreys, Jeffrey Hudson must 
always be the first) — will look less when he pops 
upon his own name in its pages. Sir Jeffrey Dunstan 
is Jeffrey the third : he must have been placed second 
in right of seniority, had it not been for the profound 
respect with which I regard the University of Glas- 
gow. The Rector of Glasgow takes precedence of 
the Mayor of Garratt. 

And what will the Reviewers do? I speak not of 
those who come to their office, (for such there are, 
though few,) like Judges to the bench, stored with all 
competent knowledge and in an equitable mind ; 
prejudging nothing, however much they may fore- 
know; and who give their sentence without regard 
to persons, upon the merits of the case ; but the aspir- 
ants and wranglers at the bar, the dribblers and the 
spit-fires, (there are of both sorts ;) — the puppies 
who bite for the pleasure which they feel in exercis- 
ing their teeth, and the dogs whose gratification 
consists in their knowledge of the pain and injury 
that they inflict ; — the creepers of literature, who 
suck their food, like the ivy, from what they strangu- 
late and kill ; they who have a party to serve, or an 
opponent to run down ; what opinion will they pro- 
nounce in their utter ignorance of the author ? They 



THE DOCTOR 233 

cannot play without a bias in their bowls ! — Aye, 
there's the rub ! 

Ha ha, ha ha ! this World doth pass 

Most merrily, I'll be sworn, 
For many an honest Indian Ass 

Goes for a Unicorn. 
Farra diddle dyno, 
This is idle fyno ! 
Tygh hygh, tygh hygh ! O sweet deUght! 

He tickles this age that can 
Call TuUia's ape a marmasite. 

And Leda's goose a swan.^ 

Then the discussion that this book will excite 
among blue stockings, and blue beards ! The stir ! 
the buzz ! the bustle ! The talk at tea tables in the 
country, and conversazione in town, — in Mr. Mur- 
ray's room, at Mr. Longman's dinners, in Mr. Hatch- 
ard's shop, — at the Royal Institution, — • at the 
Alfred, at the Admiralty, at Holland House ! Have 
you seen it ? — Do you understand it ? Are you not 
disgusted with it ? — Are you not provoked at it ? 
— Are you not dehghted with it ? Whose is it ? 
Whose can it be? 

Is it Walter Scott's ? — There is no Scotch in the 
book ; and that hand is never to be mistaken in 
its masterly strokes. Is it Lord Byron's ? — Lord 
Byron's ! Why the Author fears God, honours the 
King, and loves his country and his kind. Is it by 
Little Moore? — If it were, we should have senti- 
mental lewdness, Irish patriotism which is something 
very like British treason, and a plentiful spicing of 
personal insults to the Prince Regent. Is it the 
Laureate ? — He lies buried under his own historical 
quartos ! There is neither his mannerism, nor his 

^ British Bibliographer. 



234 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

moralism, nor his methodism. Is it Wordsworth? 
— What, — an Elephant cutting capers on the slack 
wire ! Is it Coleridge ? — The method indeed of the 
book might lead to such a suspicion, — but then it is 

intelHgible throughout. Mr. A ? — there is Latin 

in it. Mr. B ? — there is Greek in it. Mr. 

C ? — it is written in good EngUsh, Mr. Haz- 

litt? It contains no panegyric upon Bonaparte; 
no imitations of Charles Lamb ; no plagiarisms from 
Mr. Coleridge's conversation ; no abuse of that 
gentleman, Mr. Southey and Mr. Wordsworth, — 
and no repetitions of himself. Certainly, therefore, it 
is not Mr. Hazlitt's. 
Is it Charles Lamb ? 

Baa! Baa! good Sheep, have you any wool? 
Yes marry, that I have, three bags full. 

Good Sheep I write here, in emendation of the 
nursery song; because nobody ought to call this 
Lamb a hlack one. 

Comes it from the Admiralty? There indeed 
wit enough might be found and acuteness enough, and 
enough of sagacity, and enough of knowledge both 
of books and men; but when 

The Raven croaked as she sate at her meal 
And the Old Woman knew what he said,* — 

the Old Woman knew also by the tone who said it. 
Does it contain the knowledge, learning, wit, 
sprightliness, and good sense, which that distin- 
guished patron of letters my Lord Puttiface Papin- 
head has so successfully concealed from the public 
and from all his most intimate acquaintance during 
his whole life? 

* Southey. 



THE DOCTOR 235 

Is it Theodore Hook with the learned assistance of 
his brother the Archdeacon ? — A good guess that of 
the Hook : have an eye to it ! 

"I guess it is our Washington Irving," says the 
New Englander. The Virginian repHes, "I reckon it 
may be ;" and they agree that none of the Old Coun- 
try Authors are worthy to be compared with him. 

Is it Smith ? 

Which of the Smiths? for they are a numerous 
people. To say nothing of Black Smiths, White 
Smiths, Gold Smiths, and Silver Smiths, there is 
Sydney, who is Joke-Smith to the Edinburgh Review ; 
and William, who is Motion Smith to the Dissenters 
Orthodox and Heterodox, in Parliament, having been 
elected to represent them, — to wit, the aforesaid 
Dissenters — by the citizens of Norwich. And there 
is Cher Bohus who works for nobody; and there is 
Horace and his brother James, who work in Colburn's 
forge at the sign of the Camel. You probably meant 
these brothers ; they are clever fellows, with wit and 
humour as fluent as their ink ; and to their praise be 
it spoken with no gall in it. But their wares are of 
a very different quality. 

Is it the Author of Thinks I to myself? — "Think 
you so," says I to myself I. Or the Author of the 
Miseries of Human Life ? George Colman ? Wrang- 
ham, — unfrocked and in his lighter moods ? Yorick 
of Dublin ? Dr. Clarke ? Dr. Busby ? The Author 
of My Pocket Book? DTsraeli? Or that phenome- 
non of eloquence, the celebrated Irish Barrister, 
Counsellor Phillips? Or may it not be the joint 
composition of Sir Charles and Lady Morgan? he 
compounding the speculative, scientific, and erudite 
ingredients ; she intermingling the lighter parts, and 
infusing her own grace, airiness, vivacity, and spirit 



236 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

through the whole. A well-aimed guess : for they 
would throw out opinions differing from their own, 
as ships in time of war hoist false colours ; and thus 
they would enjoy the baffled curiosity of those wide 
circles of literature and fashion in which they move 
with such enviable distinction both at home and 
abroad. 

Is it Mr. Mathurin ? Is it Hans Busk ? — 

Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny bonny bride, 
Busk ye, my winsome marrow ! 

Is it he who wrote of a World without Souls, and 
made the Velvet Cushion relate its adventures ? 

Is it Rogers ? — The wit and the feehng of the book 
may fairly lead to such an ascription, if there be 
sarcasm enough to support it. So may the Pleasures 
of Memory which the Author has evidently enjoyed 
during the composition. 

Is it Mr. Utinam? He would have written it, 
— if he could. — Is it Hookham Frere ? He could 
have written it, — if he would. — Has Matthias 
taken up a new Pursuit in Literature ? Or has Wil- 
liam Bankes been trying the experiment whether he 
can impart as much amusement and instruction by 
writing, as in conversation? 

Or is it some new genius "breaking out at once like 
the Irish Rebellion a hundred thousand strong?" 
Not one of the Planets, nor fixed stars of our Literary 
System, but a Comet as brilliant as it is eccentric in 
its course. 

Away the dogs go, whining here, snuffing there, 
nosing in this place, pricking their ears in that, and 
now full-mouthed upon a false scent, — and now 
again all at fault. 

Oh the delight of walking invisible among mankind ! 



THE DOCTOR 237 

"Whoever he be," says Father O'Faggot, "he is 
an audacious heretic." "A schoolmaster, by his 
learning," says Dr. Fullbottom Wigsby. The Bishop 
would take him for a Divine, if there were not some- 
times a degree of levity in the book, which, though 
always innocent, is not altogether consistent with 
the gown. Sir Fingerfee DoHttle discovers evident 
marks of the medical profession. "He has mani- 
festly been a traveller," says the General, "and lived 
in the World." The man of letters says it would not 
surprize him if it were the work of a learned Jew. 
Mr. Dullman sees nothing in the book to excite the 
smallest curiosity ; he really does not understand it, 
and doubts whether the Author himself knew what 
he would be at. Mr. McDry declares, with a harsh 
Scotch accent, "It's just parfit nonsense." 

Interchapter VII. 

ROWLAND DIXON AND HIS COMPANY OF PUPPETS. 

Alii se ve tan eficaz el llanto, 

las fabulas y historias retratadas, 
que parece verdad, y es dulce encanto. 
* * * * 

Y para el vulgo rudo, que ignorante 
aborrece el manjar costoso, guisa 
el plato del gracioso extravagante; 

Con que les hartas de contento y risa, 
gustando de mirar sayal grossero, 
mas que sutil y Candida camisa} 

Joseph Ortiz de Villena. 

^ There one may see weeping so effective, and fables and stories 
so represented that they appear to be truth though they are but a 
pleasant deception. . . . And for the rude vulgar which in its igno- 
rance abhors a delicate diet, cook the dish of the extravagant clown 
that you may fill him up with contentment and laughter, since he 
enjoys looking at coarse sackcloth better than at fine linen. 



238 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

Were it not for that happy facility with which the 
mind in such cases commonly satisfies itself, my 
readers would find it not more easy to place themselves 
in imagination at Ingleton a hundred years ago, than 
at Thebes or Athens, so strange must it appear to 
them, that a family should have existed, in humble 
but easy circumstances, among whose articles of 
consumption neither tea nor sugar had a place, who 
never raised potatoes in their garden nor saw them 
at their table, and who never wore a cotton garment 
of any kind. 

Equally unlike any thing to which my contem- 
poraries have been accustomed, must it be for them 
to hear of an Enghshman whose talk was of phi- 
losophy, moral or speculative, not of politics ; who 
read books in folio and had never seen a newspaper ; 
nor ever heard of a magazine, review, or literary 
journal of any kind. Not less strange must it seem 
to them who, if they please, may travel by steam at 
the rate of thirty miles an hour upon the Liverpool 
and Manchester railway, or at ten miles an hour by 
stage upon any of the more frequented roads, to con- 
sider the Httle intercourse which, in those days, was 
carried on between one part of the kingdom and 
another. During young Daniel's boyhood and for 
many years after he had reached the age of manhood, 
the whole carriage of the northern counties, and indeed 
of all the remoter parts, was performed by pack- 
horses, the very name of which would long since have 
been as obsolete as their use, if it had not been pre- 
served by the sign or appellation of some of those 
inns at which they were accustomed to put up. 
Rarely indeed were the roads about Ingleton marked 
by any other wheels than those of its indigenous 
carts. 



THE DOCTOR 239 

That little town, however, obtained considerable 
celebrity in those days, as being the home and head 
quarters of Rowland Dixon, the Gesticulator Maxi- 
mus, or Puppet-show-master-general, of the North ; 
a person not less eminent in his Hne than Powel, 
whom the Spectator has immortalized. 

My readers must not form their notion of Rowland 
Dixon's company from the ambulatory puppet-shows 
which of late years have added new sights and sounds 
to the spectacles and cries of London. Far be it 
from me to depreciate those peripatetic street exhibi- 
tions, which you may have before your window at a 
call, and by which the hearts of so many children are 
continually delighted : Nay, I confess that few things 
in that great city carry so much comfort to the cockles 
of my own, as the well-known voice of Punch ; 

— the same which in my school-boy days 
I listened to, — 

as Wordsworth says of the Cuckoo, 

And I can Usten to it yet — 
And listen till I do beget 
That golden time again. 

It is a voice that seems to be as much in accord with 
the noise of towns, and the riotry of fairs, as the note 
of the Cuckoo, with the joyousness of spring fields and 
the fresh verdure of the vernal woods. 

But Rowland Dixon's company of puppets would 
be pitifully disparaged, if their size, uses, or impor- 
tance, were to be estimated by the street performances 
of the present day. 

The Dramatis Personae of these modern exhibitions 
never, I believe, comprehends more than four char- 
acters, and these four are generally the same, to wit, 



240 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

Punch, Judy, as she who used to be called Joan is 
now denominated, the Devil and the Doctor, or 
sometimes the Constable in the Doctor's stead. 
There is, therefore, as little variety in the action as 
in the personages; and their dimensions are such, 
that the whole company and the theatre in which 
they are exhibited are carried along the streets at 
quick time and with a light step by the two persons 
who manage the concern. 

But the Rowlandian, Dixonian, or Ingletonian 
puppets were large as life; and required for their 
removal a caravan — (in the use to which that word 
is now appropriated) , — a vehicle of such magnitude 
and questionable shape, that if Don Quixote had 
encountered its like upon the highway, he would 
have regarded it as the most formidable adventure 
which had ever been presented to his valour. And 
they went as far beyond our street-puppets in the 
sphere of their subjects as they exceeded them in 
size ; for in that sphere quicquid agunt homines was 
included, — and a great deal more. 

In no country, and in no stage of society, has the 
drama ever existed in a ruder state than that in which 
this company presented it. The Drolls of Bartholo- 
mew Fair were hardly so far below the legitimate 
drama, as they were above that of Rowland Dixon ; 
for the Drolls were written compositions : much 
ribaldry might be, and no doubt was, interpolated as 
opportunity allowed or invited ; but the main dia- 
logue was prepared. Here, on the contrary, there 
was no other preparation than that of frequent 
practice. The stock pieces were founded upon 
popular stories or ballads, such as Fair Rosamond, 
Jane Shore, and Bateman who hanged himself for 
love ; with scriptural subjects for Easter and Whitsun- 



THE DOCTOR 24 I 

week, such as the Creation, the Deluge, Susannah 
and the Elders, and Nebuchadnezzar or the Fall of 
Pride. These had been handed down from the time 
of the old mysteries and miracle-plays, having, in 
the progress of time and change, descended from the 
monks and clergy to become the property of such 
managers as Powel and Rowland Dixon. In what 
manner they were represented when thus 

Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, 
Fallen from their high estate, 

may be imagined from a play-bill of Queen Anne's 
reign, in which one of them is thus advertised : 

"At Crawley's Booth, over against the Crown 
Tavern in Smithfield, during the time of Bartholo- 
mew Fair, will be presented a little Opera, called the 
Old Creation of the World, yet newly revived ; with 
the addition of Noah's flood. Also several fountains 
playing water during the time of the play. The last 
scene does present Noah and his family coming out 
of the Ark, with all the beasts two and two, and all 
the fowls of the air seen in a prospect sitting upon 
trees. Likewise over the Ark is seen the Sun rising in 
a most glorious manner. Moreover, a multitude of 
Angels will be seen in a double rank, which presents a 
double prospect, one for the Sun, the other for a 
palace, where will be seen six Angels, ringing of bells. 
Likewise machines descend from above double and 
treble, with Dives rising out of Hell, and Lazarus 
seen in Abraham's bosom ; besides several figures 
dancing jigs, sarabands and country dances, to the 
admiration of the spectators ; with the merry con- 
ceits of Squire Punch, and Sir John Spendall." 

I have not found it any where stated at what time 
these irreverent representations were dicontinued 



242 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

in England, nor whether (which is not unlikely) they 
were put an end to by the interference of the magis- 
trates. The Autos Sacramentales, which form the 
most characteristic department of the Spanish 
drama, were prohibited at Madrid in 1763, at the 
instance of the Conde de Teba, then Archbishop of 
Toledo, chiefly because of the profaneness of the 
actors, and the indecency of the places in which 
they were represented : it seems, therefore, that if 
they had been performed by clerks, and within con- 
secrated precincts, he would not have objected to 
them. The reUgious dramas, though they are not 
less extraordinary and far more reprehensible, because 
in many instances nothing can be more pernicious 
than their direct tendency, were not included in the 
same prohibition ; the same marks of external rever- 
ence not being required for Saints and Images as for 
the great object of Romish Idolatry. These, prob- 
ably, will long continue to delight the Spanish people. 
But facts of the same kind may be met with nearer 
home. So recently as the year 1816, the Sacrifice of 
Isaac was represented on the stage at Paris : Samson 
was the subject of the ballet ; the unshorn son of 
Manoah deUghted the spectators by dancing a solo 
with the gates of Gaza on his back ; Delilah dipt 
him during the intervals of a jig; and the Philis- 
tines surrounded and captured him in a country 
dance ! 

That Punch made his appearance in the puppet- 
show of the Deluge, most persons know; his ex- 
clamation of "hazy weather, master Noah," having 
been preserved by tradition. In all of these wooden 
dramas, whether sacred or profane, Punch indeed 
bore a part, and that part is well described in the 
verses entitled Pupce gestiadantes, which may be 



THE DOCTOR 243 

found among the S electa Poemata Anglorum Latina, 
edited by Mr. Popham. 

Ecce tamen suhito, et medio discrimine rerutn, 
Ridiculus vultu procedit Homuncio, tergum 
Cui riget in gibbum, immensusque protruditur alvus: 
PuNCHius huic nomen, nee erai petulantior unquam 
Ullus; quinetiam media inter seria semper 
Importunus adest, lepidusque et garrulus usque 
Perstat, permiscetque jocos, atque omnia turbat. 
Scepe puellarum densa ad subsellia sese 
Convertens, — scdet en ! pulchras mea, dixit, amica 
Illic inter eas! Oculo simul improbus uno 
Connivens, aliquam illarum quasi noverat, ipsam 
Quceque pudens se signari pudefacta rubescit; 
Totaque subridet juvenumque virumque corona. 
Cum vero ambiguis obscoenas turpia dictis 
Innuit, efuso testantur gaudia risu} 

In one particular only this description is unlike the 
Punch of the Ingleton Company. He was not an 
homuncio, but a full-grown personage, who had 
succeeded with Uttle alteration either of attributes or 
appearance to the Vice of the old Mysteries, and 
served like the Clown of our own early stage, and the 
Gracioso of the Spaniards, to scatter mirth over the 
serious part of the performance, or turn it into ridi- 
cule. The wife was an appendage of later times, 

^ But behold of a sudden and in the very midst of things a man- 
nikin steps forth with a comical face, his back erected in a hump 
and a huge belly protruding. His name is Punch, and never was 
there a more impudent fellow than he ; for he constantly intrudes in 
serious action, persists unceasingly in his Ught chatter, mingles his 
jests, and throws everything into confusion. Often turning to 
where the girls are sitting on the packed benches he says, " See where 
my sweetheart is sitting there among the pretty lasses. " The rogue 
winks at the same time with one eye, as if he knew some one of them, 
and every girl as if ashamed to see herself thus pointed out begins 
to blush. And the whole ring of boys and men grins. But when by 
words of double meaning he suggests things vile* and obscene, they 
proclaim their delight with a burst of laughter. 



244 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

when it was not thought good for Punch to be alone ; 
and when, as these performances had fallen into 
lower hands, the quarrels between such a pair afforded 
a standing subject equally adapted to the capacity of 
the interlocutor and of his audience. 

A tragic part was assigned to Punch in one of Row- 
land Dixon's pieces, and that one of the most popu- 
lar, being the celebrated tragedy of Jane Shore. The 
Beadle in this piece, after proclaiming in obvious and 
opprobrious rhyme the offence which has drawn upon 
Mistress Shore this public punishment, prohibited 
all persons from relieving her on pain of death, and 
turned her out, according to the common story, to 
die of hunger in the streets. The only person who 
ventured to disobey this prohibition was Punch the 
Baker ; and the reader may judge of the dialogue of 
these pieces by this Baker's words, when he stole 
behind her, and nudging her furtively while he spake, 
offered her a loaf, saying, '^Tak it Jenny, tak it!'' 
for which act so Uttle consonant with his general 
character, Punch died a martyr to humanity by the 
hangman's hands. 

Dr. Dove used to say he doubted whether Garrick 
and Mrs. Gibber could have affected him more in 
middle Hfe, than he had been moved by Punch the 
Baker and this wooden Jane Shore in his boyhood. 
For rude as were these performances (and nothing 
could possibly be ruder), the effect on infant minds 
was prodigious, from the accompanying sense of 
wonder, an emotion which of all others is, at that time 
of life, the most delightful. Here was miracle in any 
quantity to be seen for two-pence, and be believed in 
for nothing. No matter how confined the theatre, how 
coarse or inartificial the scenery, or how miserable the 
properties ; the mind supplied all that was wanting. 



THE DOCTOR 245 

"Mr. Guy," said young Daniel to the schoolmaster, 
after one of these performances, "I wish Rowland 
Dixon could perform one of our Latin dialogues!" 

"Ay, Daniel," replied the schoolmaster, entering 
into the boy's feelings; "it would be a grand thing 
to have the Three Fatal Sisters introduced, and to 
have them send for Death ; and then for Death to 
summon the Pope and jugulate him ; and invite the 
Emperor and the King to dance ; and disarm the 
soldier, and pass sentence upon the Judge ; and stop 
the Lawyer's tongue ; and feel the Physician's pulse ; 
and make the Cook come to be killed ; and send the 
Poet to the shades ; and give the Drunkard his last 
draught. And then to have Rhadamanthus come in 
and try them all ! Methinks, Daniel, that would 
beat Jane Shore and Fair Rosamond all to nothing, 
and would be as good as a sermon to boot." 

"I believe it would, indeed!" said the Boy; "and 
then to see Mors and Natura ; and have Damnatus 
called up ; and the Three Cacodaemons at supper 
upon the sirloin of a King, and the roasted Doctor of 
Divinity, and the cruel Schoolmaster's rump ! Would 
not it be nice, Mr. Guy?" 

"The pity is, Daniel," replied Guy, "that Rowland 
Dixon is no Latiner, any more than those who go to 
see his performances." 

"But could not you put it into English for him, 
Mr. Guy?" 

"I am afraid, Daniel, Rowland Dixon would not 
thank me for my pains. Besides, I could never make 
it sound half so noble in English as in those grand 
Latin verses, which fill the mouth, and the ears, and 
the mind, — aye and the heart and soul too. No, 
boy ! schools are the proper places for representing such 
pieces, and if I had but Latiners enough we would 



246 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

have them ourselves. But there are not many 
houses, my good Daniel, in which learning is held in 
such esteem as it is at thy father's ; if there were, I 
should have more Latin scholars ; — and what is of 
far more consequence, the world would be wiser and 
better than it is!" Chapter XXIII. 



QUACK AND NO QUACK, BEING AN ACCOUNT OF DOCTOR GREEN 
AND HIS MAN KEMP. 

Hold thy hand ! health's dear maintainer ; 
Life perchance may burn the stronger : 
Having substance to maintain her 
She untouch'd may last the longer. 
When the Artist goes about 
To redress her flame, I doubt 
Oftentimes he snuffs it out. Ouarles 

It was not often that Rowland Dixon exhibited at 
Ingleton. He took his regular circuits to the fairs 
in all the surrounding country far and wide ; but in 
the intervals of his vocation, he, who when abroad 
was the servant of the public, became his own master 
at home. His puppets were laid up in ordinary, the 
voice of Punch ceased, and the master of the motions 
enjoyed otium cum dignitate. When he favoured his 
friends and neighbours with an exhibition, it was 
speciali gratia, and in a way that rather enhanced 
that dignity than derogated from it. 

A performer of a very different kind used in those 
days to visit Ingleton in his rounds, where his arrival 
was always expected by some of the community with 
great anxiety. This was a certain Dr. Greene, who 
having been regularly educated for the profession of 
medicine, and regularly graduated in it, chose to 
practice as an itinerant, and take the field with a 



THE DOCTOR 247 

Merry Andrew for his aide-de-camp. He was of a 
respectable and wealthy family in the neighbourhood 
of Doncaster, which neighborhood on their account he 
never approached in his professional circuits, though 
for himself he was far from being ashamed of the 
character that he had assumed. The course which he 
had taken had been deliberately chosen, with the two- 
fold object of gratifying his own humour, and making 
a fortune ; and in the remoter as well as the immedi- 
ate purpose, he succeeded to his heart's content. 

It is not often that so much wordly prudence is 
found connected with so much eccentricity of char- 
acter. A French poetess, Madame de Villedieu, 
taking as a text for some verses the liberal maxim 
que la vertu depend autant du temperament que des 
loix,^ says, 

Presque toujour s chacun suit son caprice; 
Heureux est le mortel que les destins amis 
Ont partage d'un caprice permis? 

He is indeed a fortunate man who, if he must have a 
hobby-horse, which is the same as saying if he will 
have one, keeps it not merely for pleasure, but for 
use, breaks it in well, has it entirely under command, 
and gets as much work out of it as he could have 
done out of a common roadster. Dr. Green did this ; 
he had not taken to this strange course because he 
was impatient of the restraints of society, but be- 
cause he fancied that his constitution both of body 
and of mind required an erratic life ; and that, within 
certain bounds which he prescribed for himself, he 
might indulge in it, both to his own advantage, and 
that of the community, — that part of the com- 

^ that virtue depends as much on temperament as on laws. 
'^ Nearly always each one pursues his own whim ; happy is the 
mortal whom the fates have dowered with a legitimate whim. 



248 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

munity at least among whom it would be his lot to 
labour. Our laws had provided itinerant Courts of 
Justice for the people. Our church had formerly 
provided itinerant preachers ; and after the Refor- 
mation, when the Mendicant Orders were abolished 
by whom this service used to be performed, such 
preachers have never failed to appear during the 
prevalence of any reUgious influenza. Dr. Green 
thought that itinerant physicians were wanted; 
and that if practitioners regularly educated and well 
qualified would condescend to such a course, the poor 
ignorant people would no longer be cheated by travel- 
ling quacks, and sometimes poisoned by them ! 

One of the most reprehensible arts to which the 
Reformers resorted in their hatred of popery, was that 
of adapting vulgar verses to church tunes, and thus 
associating with ludicrous images, or with something 
worse, melodies which had formerly been held sacred. 
It is related of Whitefield that he, making a better 
use of the same device, fitted hymns to certain popu- 
lar airs, because, he said, "there was no reason why 
the Devil should keep all the good tunes to himself." 
Green acted upon a similar principle when he took the 
field as a Physician Errant, with his man Kemp, like 
another Sancho for his Squire. But the Doctor was 
no Quixote ; and his Merry Andrew had all Sancho's 
shrewdness, without any alloy of his simpleness. 

In those times medical knowledge among the lower 
practitioners was at the lowest point. Except in 
large towns the people usually trusted to domestic 
medicine, which some Lady Bountiful administered 
from her family receipt book ; or to a Village Doctress 
whose prescriptions were as hkely sometimes to be 
dangerously active, as at others to be ridiculous and 
inert. But while they held to their garden physic 



THE DOCTOR 249 

it was seldom that any injury was done either by 
exhibiting wrong medicines or violent ones. 

Herbs, Woods, and Springs, the power that in you lies ' 
If mortal man could know your properties ! ^ 



In those days, and long after, they who required 
remedies were hkely to fare ill, under their own 
treatment, or that of their neighbours ; and worse 
under the travelling quack, who was always an igno- 
rant and impudent impostor, but found that human 
sufferings and human creduHty afforded him a never- 
failing harvest. Dr. Green knew this : he did not 
say, with the Romish priest, populus vult decipi, et 
decipietur ! for he had no intention of deceiving them ; 
but he saw that many were to be won by buffoonery, 
more by what is called palaver, and almost all by 
pretensions. Condescending, therefore, to the com- 
mon arts of quackery, he employed his man Kemp 
to tickle the multitude with coarse wit ; but he stored 
himself with the best drugs that were to be procured, 
distributed as general remedies such only as could 
hardly be misapphed and must generally prove 
serviceable ; and brought to particular cases the 
sound knowledge which he had acquired in the school 
of Boerhaave, and the skill which he had derived 
from experience aided by natural sagacity. When 
it became convenient for him to have a home, he 
estabhshed himself at Penrith, in the County of 
Cumberland, having married a lady of that place ; 
but he long continued his favourite course of life and 
accumulated in it a large fortune. He gained it by 
one maggot, and reduced it by many : nevertheless 
there remained a handsome inheritance for his chil- 

^ Fletcher. 



250 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

dren. His son proved as maggoty as the father, 
ran through a good fortune, and when conj&ned in 
the King's Bench prison for debt, wrote a book upon 
the Art of cheap Hving in London ! 

The father's local fame, though it has not reached 
to the third and fourth generation, survived him far 
into the second ; and for many years after his retire- 
ment from practice, and even after his death, every 
travelUng mountebank in the northern counties 
adopted the name of Dr. Green. 

At the time to which this chapter refers. Dr. Green 
was in his meridian career, and enjoyed the highest 
reputation throughout the sphere of his itinerancy. 
Ingleton lay in his rounds, and whenever he came there 
he used to send for the schoolmaster to pass the even- 
ing with him. He was always glad if he could find an 
opportunity also of conversing with the elder Daniel, as 

the Flossofer of those parts. 

Chapter XXIV. 



THE doctor's contemporaries AT LEYDEN. EARLY FRIEND- 
SHIP. COWPER'S melancholy observation THAT GOOD 
DISPOSITIONS ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE CORRUPTED THAN EVIL 
ONES TO BE CORRECTED. YOUTHFUL CONNECTIONS LOOSENED 
IN THE COMMON COURSE OF THINGS. A FINE FRAGMENT BY 
WALTER LANDOR. 

Lass mich der Stunde gedenken, und jedes kleineren Umstands. 

Ach, wer ruft nicht so gem unwiederbringliches an! 
Jenes siisse Gedrdnge der leichtesten irdischen Tage, 

Ach, wer schdtzt ihn genug, dies en vereilenden Werth! 
Klein erscheinet es nun, dock ach! nicht Izleinlich dent Herzen; 

Macht die Liebe, die Kunst, jegliches Kleine doch gross} 

^ Let me remember the hour and each trifling circumstance. Ah, 
who does not gladly invoke what cannot be brought back ! That 
sweet impulse of earth's lightest day, ah, who treasures it enough, 
this transitory good ! Trifling it seems now, but ah ! not trifling to 
the heart ; Love and Art make each trifle great. Goethe. 



THE DOCTOR 251 

The circumstances of my friend's boyhood and 
early youth, though singularly favourable to his 
peculiar cast of mind, in many or indeed most re- 
spects, were in this point disadvantageous, that they 
afforded him little or no opportunity of forming those 
early friendships which, when they are well formed, 
contribute so largely to our future happiness. Per- 
haps the greatest advantage of public education, as 
compared with private, is, that it presents more such 
opportunities than are ever met with in any subse- 
quent stage of human life. And yet even then in 
friendship, as afterwards in love, we are for the most 
part less directed by choice than by what is called 
chance. 

Daniel Dove never associated with so many per- 
sons of his own age at any other time as during his 
studies at Leyden. But he was a foreigner there, 
and this is almost as great an obstacle to friendship 
as to matrimony ; and there were few English stu- 
dents among whom to choose. Dr. Brocklesby took 
his degree, and left the University the year before he 
entered it ; Brocklesby was a person in whose society 
he might have delighted ; but he was a cruel experi- 
mentahst, and the dispathy which this must have 
excited in our friend, whose love of science, ardent as 
it was, never overcame the sense of humanity, would 
have counteracted the attraction of any intellectual 
powers, however brilliant. Akenside, with whom 
in many respects he would have felt himself in uni- 
son, and by whose society he might have profited, 
graduated also there just before his time. 

He had a contemporary more remarkable than 
either in his countryman John Wilkes, who was 
pursuing his studies there, not without some dili- 
gence, under the superintendence of a private tutor; 



252 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

and who obtained much notice for those lively and 
agreeable talents which were afterwards so flagrantly 
abused. But the strict and conscientious frugality 
which Dove observed rendered it unfit for him to 
associate with one who had a liberal allowance, and 
expended it lavishly : and there was also a stronger 
impediment to any intimacy between them ; for no 
talents however companionable, no qualities however 
engaging, could have induced him to associate with 
a man whose irreligion was of the worst kind, and 
who delighted in licentious conversation. 

There was one of his countrymen indeed there 
(so far as a Scotchman may be called so) with whom 
he formed an acquaintance that might have ripened 
into intimacy, if their lots had fallen near to each 
other in after life. This was Thomas Dickson, a 
native of Dumfries ; they attended the same lectures, 
and consorted on terms of friendly familiarity. 
But when their University course is completed, men 
separate, like stage-coach travellers at the end of a 
journey, or fellow passengers in a ship when they 
reach their port. While Dove "pursued the noiseless 
tenor of his way" at Doncaster, Dickson tried his 
fortune in the metropolis, where he became Physician 
to the London Hospital, and a Fellow of the Royal 
Society. He died in the year 1784, and is said in his 
epitaph to have been "a. man of singular probity, 
loyalty, and humanity ; kind to his relations, beloved 
by all who knew him, learned and skilful in his pro- 
fession. Unfeed by the poor, he lived to do good, 
and died a Christian believer." For awhile some 
intercourse between him and the Doctor had been 
kept up by letters ; but the intervals in their corre- 
spondence became longer and longer as each grew more 
engaged in business ; and new connections gradually 



THE DOCTOR 253 

effaced an impression which had not been made early, 
nor had ever been very deep. The friendship that, 
with no intercourse to nourish it, keeps itself alive 
for years, must have strong roots in a good soil. 

Cowper regarded these early connections in an un- 
favourable and melancholy mood. "For my own 
part," says he, "I found such friendships, though 
warm enough in their commencement, surprisingly 
liable to extinction ; and of seven or eight whom I 
had selected for intimates out of about three hundred, 
in ten years' time not one was left me. The truth is 
that there may be, and often is, an attachment of 
one boy to another, that looks very like a friendship ; 
and while they are in circumstances that enable 
them mutually to oblige and to assist each other, 
promises well and bids fair to be lasting. But they 
are no sooner separated from each other, by entering 
into the world at large, than other connections and 
new employments in which they no longer share to- 
gether, efface the remembrance of what passed in 
earHer days, and they become strangers to each other 
for ever. Add to this, the man frequently differs 
so much from the hoy, — his principles, manners, 
temper, and conduct undergo so great an alteration, 
— that we no longer recognize in him our old play- 
fellow, but find him utterly unworthy and unfit for 
the place he once held in our affections." These 
sentiments he has also expressed in verse : — 

— School-friendships are not always found, 
Though fair in promise, permanent and sound ; 
The most disinterested and virtuous minds, 
In early years connected, time unbinds ; 
New situations give a different cast 
Of habit, inclination, temper, taste ; 
And he that seem'd our counterpart at first, 
Soon shows the strong similitude reversed. 



254 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

Young heads are giddy, and young hearts are warm, 
And make mistakes for manhood to reform. 
Boys are, at best, but pretty buds unblown. 
Whose scent and hues are rather guessed than known ; 
Each dreams that each is just what he appears, 
But learns his error in maturer years. 
When disposition, like a sail unfurled, 
Shows all its rents and patches to the world. 

Disposition, however, is the one thing which under- 
goes no other change than that of growth in after 
life. The physical constitution, when any morbid 
principle is innate in it, rarely alters ; the moral con- 
stitution — (except by a miracle of God's mercy) — 
never. ^ , ^ 

— AvPpojTTOts o det 
'O fxkv TTOviqpo^, ovh\v aXXo TrXrjv KaKOS-^ 

"Believe if you will," say the Persians, "that a 
mountain has removed from one place to another; 
but if you are told that a man has changed his nature, 
believe it not!" 

The best of us have but too much cause for making 
it part of our daily prayer that we fall into no sin! 
But there is an original pravity which deserves to 
be so called in the darkest import of the term, — an 
inborn and incurable disease of the moral being, 
manifested as soon as it has strength to show itself ; 
and wherever this is perceived in earliest youth, it 
may too surely be predicted what is to be expected 
when all control of discipline is removed. Of those 
that bring with them such a disposition into the 
world, it cannot be said that they fall into sin, be- 
cause it is too manifest that they seek and pursue it 
as the bent of their nature. No wonder that wild 
theories have been devised to account for what is so 

^ Ever among men the wicked one is nothing else than wicked. 



THE DOCTOR 255 

mysterious, so awful, and yet so incontestable ! 
Zephaniah Holwell, who will always be remembered 
for his sufferings in the Black Hole, wrote a strange 
book in which he endeavoured to prove that men 
were fallen angels, that is, that human bodies are the 
forms in which fallen angels are condemned to suffer 
for the sins which they have committed in their 
former state. Akin to this is the Jewish fancy, held 
by Josephus, as well as his less liberalized countrymen, 
that the souls of wicked men deceased got into the 
bodies of the living and possessed them ; and by this 
agency they accounted for all diseases. Holwell's 
theory is no doubt as old as any part of the Oriental 
systems of philosophy and figments ; it is one of the 
many vain attempts to account for that fallen nature 
of which every man who is sincere enough to look 
into his own heart, finds there what may too truly be 
called an indwelling witness. Something hke the 
Jewish notion was held by John Wesley and Adam 
Clarke ; and there are certain cases in which it is 
difficult not to admit it, especially when the question 
of the demoniacs is considered. Nor is there any 
thing that shocks us in supposing this to be possible 
for the body, and the mind also, as depending upon 
the bodily organs. — But that the moral being, the 
soul itself, the Ufe of life, the immortal part, should 
appear, as so often it undoubtedly does, to be thus 
possessed, this indeed is of all mysterious things the 
darkest. 

For a disposition thus evil in its nature it almost 
seems as if there could be no hope. On the other 
hand, there is no security in a good one, if the support 
of good principles (that is to say, of rehgion — of 
Christian faith — ) be wanting. It may be soured 
by misfortunes, it may be corrupted by wealth, it 



256 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

may be blighted by neediness, it may lose "all its 
original brightness." 

School friendships arise out of sympathy of dispo- 
sition at an age when the natural disposition is under 
little control and less disguise ; and there are reasons 
enough, of a less melancholy kind than Cowper con- 
templated, why so few of these blossoms set, and of 
those which afford a promise of fruit, why so small a 
proportion should bring it to maturity. "The amity 
that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie ; " ^ 
and even when not thus dissolved, the mutual attach- 
ment which in boyhood is continually strengthened by 
similarity of circumstance and pursuits, dies a natural 
death in most cases when that similarity ceases. If 
one goes north in the intellectual bearings of his course 
in life, and the other south, they will at last be far 
as the poles asunder. If their pursuits are altogether 
different, and their opinions repugnant, in the first 
case they cease to think of each other with any warm 
interest; in the second, if they think of each other 
at all, it is with an uncomfortable feehng, and a pain- 
ful sense of change. 

The way in which too many ordinary minds are 
worsened by the mere course of time is finely delineated 
by Landor, in some verses which he designed as an 
imitation, not of a particular passage in a favourite 
Greek author, but of his manner and style of thought. 

Friendship, in each successive stage of life, 
As we approach him, varies to the view ; 
In youth he wears the face of Love himself, 
Of Love without his arrows and his wings. 
Soon afterwards with Bacchus and with Pan 
Thou findest him ; or hearest him resign, 
To some dog-pastor, by the quiet fire, 
With much good-will and jocular adieu, 

1 Shakespeare. 



THE DOCTOR 257 

His age-worn mule, or broken-hearted steed. 

Fly not, as thou wert wont, to his embrace ; 

Lest, after one long yawning gaze, he swear 

Thou art the best good fellow in the world, 

But he had quite forgotten thee, by Jove ! 

Or laughter wag his newly bearded chin 

At recollection of his childish hours. 

But wouldst thou see, young man, his latest form, 

When e'en this laughter, e'en this memory fails, 

Look at yon fig-tree statue ! golden once, 

As all would deem it, rottenness faUs out 

At every little hole the worms have made ; 

And if thou triest to hft it up again 

It breaks upon thee ! Leave it ! touch it not ! 

Its very lightness would encumber thee. 

Come — thou has seen it : 'tis enough ; be gone ! 

The admirable writer who composed these verses 
in some melancholy mood, is said to be himself one 
of the most constant and affectionate of friends. It 
may indeed safely be affirmed, that generous minds, 
when they have once known each other, never can be 
alienated as long as both retain the characteristics 
which brought them into union. No distance of 
place, or lapse of time, can lessen the friendship of 
those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's 
worth. There are even some broken attachments in 
friendship as well as in love which nothing can de- 
stroy, and it sometimes happens that we are not con- 
scious of their strength till after the disruption. 

There are a few persons known to me in years 
long past, but with whom I lived in no particular 
intimacy then, and have held no correspondence 
since, whom I could not now meet without an emotion 
of pleasure deep enough to partake of pain, and who, 
I doubt not, entertain for me feelings of the same 
kind and degree ; whose eyes sparkle when they hear, 
and glisten sometimes when they speak of me; and 



258 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

who think of me as I do of them, with an affection 
that increases as we advance in years. This is be- 
cause our moral and intellectual sympathies Jiave 
strengthened; and because, though far asunder, we 
know that we are travelling the same road toward 
our resting place in heaven. "There is such a pleas- 
ure as this," says Cowper, "which would want 
explanation to some folks, being perhaps a mystery 
to those whose hearts are a mere muscle, and serve 
only for the purposes of an even circulation." 

Chapter LXXXV. 



MATRIMONY AND RAZORS. LIGHT SAYINGS LEADING TO GRAVE 
THOUGHTS. USES OF SHAVING. 

I wonder whence that tear came, when I smiled 
In the production on't ! Sorrow's a thief 
That can, when joy looks on, steal forth a grief. 

Massinger. 

Oh pitiable condition of human kind ! One colour 
is born to slavery abroad, and one sex to shavery at 
home ! — A woman, to secure her comfort and well- 
being in this country, stands in need of one thing 
only, which is a good husband ; but a man hath to 
provide himself with two things, a good wife, and a 
good razor, and it is more difficult to find the latter 
than the former. The Doctor made these remarks 
one day, when his chin was smarting after an uncom- 
fortable operation ; and Mrs. Dove retorted by say- 
ing that women had still the less favourable lot, for 
scarce as good razors might be, good husbands were 
still scarcer. 

"Aye," said the Doctor, "Deborah is right, and 
it is even so ; for the goodness of wife, husband, and 



THE DOCTOR 259 

razor depends upon their temper, and, taking in all 
circumstances and causes natural and adventitious, 
we might reasonably conclude that steel would more 
often be tempered precisely to the just degree, than 
that the elements of which humanity is composed 
should be all nicely proportioned and amalgamated 
happily. Rarely indeed could Nature stand up, 
and pointing out a sample of its workmanship in 
this line say to all the world, this is a Man ! meaning 
thereby what man, rational, civilized, well educated, 
redeemed, immortal man, may and ought to be. 
Where this could be said in one instance, in a thou- 
sand or ten thousand others she might say this is 
what Man has by his own devices made himself, 
a sinful and miserable creature, weak or wicked, self- 
ish, sensual, earthly-minded, busy in producing 
temporal evil for others, — and everlasting evil for 
himself!" 

But as it was his delight to find good, or to look for 
it, in everything, and especially when he could dis- 
cover the good which may be educed from evil, he 
used to say that more good than evil resulted from 
shaving, preposterous as he knew the practice to be, 
irrational as he admitted it was, and troublesome 
as to his cost he felt it. The inconvenience and the 
discomfort of the operation no doubt were great, — 
very great, especially in frosty weather, and during 
March winds, and when the beard is a strong beard. 
He did not extenuate the greatness of this evil, which 
was moreover of daily recurrence. Nay, he said, it 
was so great, that had it been necessary for physical 
reasons, that is to say, were it a law of nature, instead 
of a practice enjoined by the custom of the country, 
it would undoubtedly have been mentioned in the 
third chapter of the book of Genesis, as the peculiar 



26o SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

penalty inflicted upon the sons of Adam, because of 
his separate share in the primal offence. The daugh- 
ters of Eve, as is well known, suffer expressly for their 
mother's sin ; and the final though not apparent 
cause why the practice of shaving, which is appar- 
ently so contrary to reason, should universally pre- 
vail in all civiKzed christian countries, the Doctor 
surmised might be, that by this means the sexes 
were placed in this respect upon an equahty, each 
having its own penalty to bear, and those penalties 
being — perhaps — on the whole equal ; or if man 
had the heavier for his portion, it was no more than 
he deserved, for having yielded to the weaker vessel. 
These indeed are things which can neither be weighed 
nor measured ; but it must be considered that shav- 
ing comes every day to all men of what may be called 
the clean classes, and to the poorest labourer or handi- 
craft once a week ; and that if the daily shavings of 
one year, or even the weekly ones, could be put into 
one shave, the operation would be fatal, — it would 
be more than flesh and blood could bear. 

In the case of man this penalty brought with it 
no after compensation, and here the female had the 
advantage. Some good nevertheless resulted from 
it, both to the community and to the individual 
shaver, unless he missed it by his own fault. 

To the community because it gives employment 
to Barbers, a Hvely and loquacious race, who are 
everywhere the great receivers and distributors of all 
news, private or public in their neighbourhood. 

To the individual, whether he were, Kke the Doc- 
tor himself, and as Zebedee is familiarly said to have 
been, an autokureus, which is, being interpreted, a 
self-shaver, or shaver of himself ; or merely a shavee, 
as the labouring classes almost always are, the opera- 



THE DOCTOR 261 

tion in either case brings the patient into a frame of 
mind favourable to his moral improvement. He 
must be quiet and composed when under the oper- 
ator's hands, and not less so if under his own. In 
whatever temper or state of feeling he may take his 
seat in the barber's chair, or his stand at the look- 
ing-glass, he must at once become calm. There 
must be no haste, no impatience, no irritability; so 
surely as he gives way to either, he will smart for it. 
And however prone to wander his thoughts may be, 
at other and perhaps more serious times, he must be 
as attentive to what he is about in the act of shaving, 
as if he were working a problem in mathematics. 

As a Uon's heart and a lady's hand are among the 
requisites for a surgeon, so are they for the Zebedeean 
shaver. He must have a steady hand, and a mind 
steadied for the occasion ; a hand confident in its 
skill, and a mind assured that the hand is compe- 
tent to the service upon which it is ordered. Fear 
brings with it its immediate punishment as surely 
as in a field of battle ; if he but think of cutting him- 
self, cut himself he will. 

I hope I shall not do so to-morrow ; but if what 
I have just written should come into my mind, and- 
doubt come over me in consequence, too surely then 
I shall ! Let me forget myself, therefore, as quickly 
as I can, and fall again into the train of the Doctor's 
thoughts. 

Did not the Due de Brissac perform the operation 
himself for a moral and dignified sentiment, instead 
of letting himself be shaved by his valet-de-chambre ? 
Often was he heard to say unto himself in grave solil- 
oquy, while holding the razor open, and adjusting 
the blade to the proper angle, in readiness for the 
first stroke, "Timoleon de Cosse, God hath made 



262 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

thee a Gentleman, and the King hath made thee a 
Duke. It is nevertheless right and fit that thou 
shouldst have something to do ; therefore thou 
shalt shave thyself!" — In this spirit of humihty 
did that great Peer "mundify his muzzel." 

De sqavoir les raisons pourquoy son pere luy donna 
ce nom de Timoleon, encore que ce ne jut nom Chretien^ 
mats payen, il ne se peut dire; toutesfois, a V imita- 
tion des Italiens et des Grecs, qui out emprunte la plus 
part des noms payens, et n'en sont corrigez pour cela, 
et n'en font aucun scruple, — il avoit cette opinion, 
que son pere luy avoit donne ce nom par humeur, et 
venant a lire la vie de Timoleon elk luy pleut, et pour 
ce en imposa le nom a son fils, presageant qu'un jour 
il luy seroit semblable. Et certes pour si peu quHl 
a vesQU, il luy a ressemble quelque peu; mais, s^il eust 
vesqu il ne Veust ressemble quelque peu en sa retraite 
si longue, et en son temporisement si tardij quHl jit, et 
si longue abstinence de guerre; ainsi que luy-mesme le 
disoit souvent, quHl ne demeureroit pour tous les biens 
du monde retire si longuement que jit ce Timoleon} 

This is a parenthesis : I return to our philosopher's 
discourse. 

^ As for the reasons why his father gave him the name Timoleon 
seeing that it was not a Christian but a pagan name, they are hard 
to tell ; probably in imitation of the Italians and Greeks who bor- 
rowed most of the pagan names and were neither rebuked for it nor 
made any scruple of it, — he was of the opinion that his father had 
given him this name from a whim, that happening to read the life 
of Timoleon he liked it and therefore named his son after him, fore- 
seeing that he would one day resemble him. And to be sure, during 
the short time that he lived he resembled him quite a little ; but if 
he had continued to live he would not have resembled him at all in 
his long retirement, his sluggish temporizing, and his long abstinence 
from war. He often used to say himself that he would not for all 
the goods of the world remain so long in retirement as did Timoleon. 

Brantome. 



THE DOCTOR 263 

And what lectures, I have heard the Doctor say, 
does the looking-glass, at such times, read to those 
men who look in it at such times only ! The glass 
is no flatterer, the person in no disposition to flatter 
himself, the plight in which he presents himself as- 
suredly no flattering one. It would be superfluous 
to have TvojOi 'Eeavrov inscribed upon the frame of 
the mirror ; he cannot fail to know himself, who con- 
templates his own face there, long and steadily, every 
day. Nor can he as he waxes old need a death's 
head for a memento in his closet or his chamber ; for 
day by day he traces the defeatures which the hand 
of Time is making, — that hand which never sus- 
pends its work. 

Thus his good melancholy oft began 
On the catastrophe and heel of pastime.^ 

"When I was a round-faced, red-faced, smooth- 
faced boy," said he to me one day, following the 
vein upon which he had thus fallen, "I used to smile 
if people said they thought me Hke my father, or my 
mother, or my uncle. I now discern the resemblance 
to each and all of them myself, as age brings out the 
primary and natural character of the countenance, 
and wears away all that accidental circumstances 
had superinduced upon it. The recognitions, — 
the ghmpses which at such times I get of the departed, 
carry my thoughts into the past ; — and bitter, — 
bitter indeed would those thoughts be, if my antic- 
ipations — (wishes I might almost call them, were 
it lawful as wishes to indulge in them) — did not also 
lead me into the future, when I shall be gathered to 
my fathers in spirit, though these mortal exuvics 

^ Shakespeare. 



264 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

should not be laid to moulder with them under the 
same turf." ^ 

There were very few to whom he talked thus. 
If he had not entirely loved me, he would never have 
spoken to me in this strain. Chapter CLIIL 

A poet's calculation concerning the time employed in 

SHAVING, AND THE USE THAT MIGHT BE MADE OF IT. THE 
LAKE POETS LAKE SHAVERS ALSO. A PROTEST AGAINST LAKE 
SHAVING. 

Intellect and industry are never incompatible. There is 
more wisdom, and will be more benefit, in combining them than 
scholars like to beheve, or than the common world imagine. 
Life has time enough for both, and its happiness will be increased 
by the union. Sharon Turner. 

The poet Campbell is said to have calculated that 
a man who shaves himself every day, and lives to 
the age of threescore and ten, expends during his 
life as much time in the act of shaving, as would 
have sufficed for learning seven languages. 

The poet Southey is said to carry shaving to its 
ne plus ultra of independency, for he shaves sans 
looking-glass, sans shaving-brush, sans soap, or 
substitute for soap, sans hot-water, sans cold-water, 

^ The passage following is from a letter of Southey's, published by 
Sir Egerton Brydges in his Autobiography : " Did you ever remark 
how remarkably old age brings out family likenesses, — which, having 
been kept, as it were, in abeyance while the passions and the business 
of the world engrossed the parties, come forth again in age (as in 
infancy), the features settling into their primary characters — before 
dissolution ? I have seen some affecting instances of this, — a 
brother and sister, than whom no two persons in middle life could 
have been more unlike in countenance or in character, becoming like 
as twins at last. I now see my father's lineaments in the looking- 
glass, where they never used to appear." — Vol. ii. p. 270. 

Warter. 



THE DOCTOR 265 

sans everything except a razor. And yet among 
all the characters which he bears in the world, no 
one has ever given him credit for being a cunning 
shaver ! 

(Be it here observed in a parenthesis that I sup- 
pose the word shaver in this so common expression 
to have been corrupted from shavehng; the old 
contemptuous word for a Priest.) 

But upon reflection, I am not certain whether it is 
of the poet Southey that this is said, or of the poet 
Wordsworth. I may easily have confounded one 
with the other in my recollections, just as what was 
said of Romulus might have been repeated of Remus 
while they were both hving and flourishing together ; 
or as a mistake in memory might have been made 
between the two Kings of Brentford when they both 
quitted the stage, each smelling to his nosegay, which 
it was who made his exit P. S. and which O. P. 

Indeed we should never repeat what is said of 
public characters (a denomination under which all 
are to be included who figure in public Hfe, from the 
high, mighty and most illustrious Duke of Welling- 
ton at this time, down to little Waddington) with- 
out qualifying it as common report, or as newspaper, 
or magazine authority. It is very possible that the 
Lake poets may, both of them, shave after the manner 
of other men. The most attached friends of Mr. 
Rogers can hardly believe that he has actually said 
all the good things which are ascribed to him in a 
certain weekly journal ; and Mr. Campbell may 
not have made the remark which I have repeated, 
concerning the time employed in mowing the chin, 
and the use to which the minutes that are so spent 
might be appHed. Indeed so far am I from wishing 
to impute to this gentleman upon common report, 



2 66 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

anything which might not be to his credit, or which he 
might not hke to have the credit of, that it is with the 
greatest difficulty I can persuade myself to beheve 
in the authenticity of his letter to Mr. Moore upon 
the subject of Lord and Lady Byron, though he has 
published it himself, and in his own name. 

Some one else may have made the calculation con- 
cerning shaving and languages, some other poet, 
or proser, or one who never attempted either prose 
or rhyme. Was he not the first person who proposed 
the estabhshment of the London University, and if 
this calculation were his, is it possible that he should 
not have proposed a plan for it founded thereon, 
which might have entitled the new institution to 
assume the title of the Polyglot College? 

Be this as it may, I will not try the sans-every- 
thing way of shaving, let who will have invented it : 
never will I try it, unless thereto by dire necessity 
enforced ! I will neither shave dry, nor be dry-shaved, 
while any of those things are to be obtained which 
either mitigate or abbreviate the operation. I will 
have a brush, I will have Naples soap, or some sub- 
stitute for it, which may enable me always to keep a 
dry and clean apparatus. I will have hot-water for 
the sake of the razor, and I will have a looking-glass 
for the sake of my chin and my upper lip. No, never 
will I try Lake shaving, unless thereto by dire necessity 
enforced. 

Nor would I be enforced to it by any necessity 
less dire than that with which King Arthur was 
threatened by a messager from Kynge Ryons of 
North-walys ; and Kynge he was of all Ireland and 
of many lies. And this was his message, gretynge 
wel Kynge Arthur in this manere wyse, sayenge, 
"that Kynge Ryons had discomfyte and overcome 



THE DOCTOR 267 

eleaven Kynges, and everyche of hem did hym hom- 
age, and that was this ; they gaf hym their beardys 
clene flayne off, as moche as ther was ; wherfor the 
messager came for King Arthurs beard. For King 
Ryons had purfyled a mantel with Kynges berdes, 
and there lacked one place of the mantel, wherfor he 
sent for his herd, or els he wold entre in to his landes, 
and brenne and slee, and never leve tyl he have thi 
hede and thi herd." If the King of the Lakes should 
require me to do him homage by shaving without 
soap, I should answer with as much spirit as was 
shown in the answer which King Arthur returned to 
the Messenger from King Ryons. "Wei, sayd 
Arthur, thow hast said thy message, the whiche is 
the most vylanous and lewdest message that ever 
man herd sente unto a Kynge. Also thow mayst 
see, my berd is ful yong yet to make a purfyl of hit. 
But telle thow thy Kynge this ; I owe hym none 
homage, ne none of mine elders ; but or it be longe to, 
he shall do me homage on bothe his kneys, or els he 
shall lese his hede by the feithe of my body, for this 
is the most shamefullest message that ever I herd 
speke of. I have aspyed, thy King met never yet 
with worshipful man ; but telle hym, I wyll have 
his hede without he doo me homage : Then the mes- 
sager departed." ^^^^^ ^^IV. 

THE poet's calculation TESTED AND PROVED. 

Fiddle-faddle, don't tell of this and that, and everything 
in the world, but give me mathematical demonstration. 

CONGREVE. 

But I will test (as an American would say, — though 
let it be observed in passing that I do not advocate 



268 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

the use of Americanisms,) — I will test Mr, Camp- 
bell's assertion. And as the Lord President of the 
New Monthly Magazine has not favoured the world 
with the calculations upon which his assertion, if 
his it be, is founded, I will investigate it, step by 
step, with which intent I have this morning, Satur- 
day, May the fifteenth, 1830, minuted myself during 
the act of shaving. 

The time employed was, within a second or two 
more or less, nine minutes. 

I neither hurried the operation, nor lingered about 
it. Everything was done in my ordinary orderly 
way, steadily, and without waste of time. 

Now as to my beard, it is not such a beard as that 
of Domenico d'Ancona, which was delle barbe la corona, 
that is to say the crown of beards, or rather, in Eng- 
lish idiom, the king. 

Una barba la piu singulare 
Che mai fosse discriiia in verso o'n prosa, 

A beard the most unparallel'd 
That ever was yet described in prose or rhyme, 

and of which Berni says that the Barber ought to 
have felt less reluctance in cutting the said Domenico's 
throat, than in cutting off so incomparable a beard. 
Neither do I think that mine ever by possibihty could 
vie with that of Futteh Ali Shah, King of Persia 
at this day: nay, I doubt whether Macassar Oil, 
Bear's grease. Elephant's marrow, or the approved 
recipe of sour milk with which the Persians cultivate 
their beards, could ever bring mine to the far inferior 
growth of his son's, Prince Abbas Mirza. Indeed 
no Mussulmen would ever look upon it, as they did 
upon Mungo Park's, with envious eyes, and think 
that it was too good a beard for a Christian. But 



THE DOCTOR 269 

for a Christian, and moreover an Englishman, it is a 
sufficient beard ; and for the individual a desirable 
one : nihil me pcenikt hujus harha; desirable I say, 
inasmuch as it is in thickness and rate of growth 
rather below the average standard of beards. Nine 
minutes, therefore, will be about the average time 
required for shaving, by a Zebedeean, — one who 
shaves himself. A professional operator makes 
quicker work ; but he cannot be always exactly to 
the time, and at the year's end as much may have 
been lost in waiting for the barber, as is gained by his 
celerity of hand. 

Assuming, then, the moderate average of nine 
minutes, nine minutes per day amount to an hour 
and three minutes per week ; an hour and three min- 
utes per week are fifty-four hours thirty-six minutes 
per year. We will suppose that our shaver begins 
to operate every day when he has completed his 
twentieth year ; many, if not most men, begin earlier ; 
they will do so if they are ambitious of obtaining 
whiskers ; they must do so if their beards are black, 
or carroty, or of strong growth. There are, then, 
fifty years of daily shaving to be computed ; and 
in that time he will have consumed two thousand, 
seven hundred and thirty hours in the act of shaving 
himself. I have stated the numbers throughout 
in words, to guard against the mistakes which always 
creep into the after editions of any book, when figures 
are introduced. 

Now let us see whether a man could in that time 
acquire a competent knowledge of seven languages. 

I do not, of course, mean such a knowledge as Pro- 
fessor Porson and Dr. Elmsley had attained of Greek, 
or as is possessed by Bishop Blomfield and Bishop 
Monk, — but a passable knowledge of Hving Ian- 



270 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

guages, such as would enable a man to read them 
with facility and pleasure, if not critically, and to 
travel without needing either an interpreter — or 
the use of French in the countries where they are 
spoken. 

Dividing, therefore, two thousand seven hundred 
and thirty, being the number of hours which might 
be appropriated to learning languages, — by seven, 

— the number of languages to be learnt, we have 
three hundred and ninety hours for each language; 
three hundred and ninety lessons of an hour long, — 
wherein it is evident that any person of common 
capacity might with common diligence learn to read, 
speak, and write — sufficiently well for all ordinary- 
purposes, any European language. The assertion, 
therefore, though it might seem extravagant at 
first, is true as far as it goes, and is only inaccurate 
because it is far short of the truth. 

For take notice that I did not strop the razor 
this morning, but only passed it, after the operation, 
ten or twelve times over the palm of the hand, accord- 
ing to my every-day practice. One minute more 
at least would have been required for stropping. 
There are many men whose beards render it neces- 
sary for them to apply to the strop every day, 
and for a longer time, — and who are obhged to try 
first one razor and then another. But let us allow 
only a minute for this — one minute a day amounts 
to six hours five minutes in the year; and in fifty 
years to three hundred and four hours ten minutes, 

— time enough for an eighth language. 

Observe, also, that some languages are so easy, and 
others so nearly related to each other, that very much 
less than half the number of hours allowed in this 
computation would suffice for learning them. It is 



THE DOCTOR 271 

strictly true that in the time specified a man of good 
capacity might add seven more languages to the seven 
for which that computation was formed ; and that 
a person who has any remarkable aptitude for such 
studies might in that time acquire every language 
in which there are books to be procured. 

Hi Men, me suis-je enfin rendu croyable ? Est-on content ? ^ 

See, Reader, what the value of time is, when put 
out at simple interest. But there is no simple inter- 
est in knowledge. Whatever funds you have in that 
Bank go on increasing by interest upon interest, — 
till the Bank fails. Chapter CLV. 



AN ANECDOTE OF WESLEY, AND AN ARGUMENT ARISING OUT OF 
IT, TO SHOW THAT THE TIME EMPLOYED IN SHAVING IS NOT 
SO MUCH LOST TIME ; AND YET THAT THE POET'S CALCULATION 
REMAINS OF PRACTICAL USE. 

Questo medesimo anchora con una ultra gagliardissima ragione 
vi confermo? Lodovico Dominichi. 

There was a poor fellow among John Wesley's 
followers, who suffered no razor to approach his 
chin, and thought it impossible that any one could 
be saved who did : shaving was in his opinion a sin 
for which there could be no redemption. If it had 
been convenient for their interests to put him out 
of the way, his next of kin would have had no difii- 
culty in obtaining a lettre de cachet against him from 
a mad-doctor, and he might have been imprisoned for 
life, for this harmless madness. This person came 

* Well, have I at last made myself believed ? Are you satisfied ? 

PiRON. 

^ This very thing I shall further confirm for you with another most 
exquisite reason. 



272 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

one day to Mr. Wesley, after sermon, and said to 
him in a manner which manifested great concern, 
"Sir, you can have no place in Heaven without a 
beard ! therefore, I entreat you, let your's grow 
immediately !" 

Had he put the matter to Wesley as a case of 
conscience, and asked that great economist of time 
how he could allow himself every day of his life 
to bestow nine precious minutes upon a needless oper- 
ation, the Patriarch of the Methodists might have 
been struck by the appeal, but he would soon have 
perceived that it could not be supported by any just 
reasoning. 

For in the first place, in a Ufe of such incessant 
activity as his, the time which Wesley employed 
in shaving himself, was so much time for reflection. 
However busy he might be, as he always was, — 
however hurried he might be on that particular day, 
here was a portion of time, small indeed, but still a 
distinct and apprehensible portion, in which he 
could call his thoughts to council. Like our excellent 
friend, he was a person who knew this, and he prof- 
ited by it, as well knowing what such minutes of 
reflection are worth. For although thought cometh, 
like the wind, when it hsteth, yet it listeth to come at 
regular appointed times, when the mind is in a state 
of preparation for it, and the mind will be brought into 
that state, unconsciously, by habit. We may be as 
ready for meditation at a certain hour, as we are for 
dinner, or for sleep ; and there will be just as little 
need for an effort of volition on our part. 

Secondly, Mr. Wesley would have considered that 
if beards were to be worn, some care and consequently 
some time must be bestowed upon them. The beard 
must be trimmed occasionally, if you would not have 



THE DOCTOR 273 

it as ragged as an old Jew Clothes-man's : it must 
also be kept clean, if you would not have it inhabited 
like the Emperor Julian's ; and if you desired to have 
it like Aaron's, you would oil it. Therefore it is 
probable that a Zebedeean who is cleanly in his 
habits would not save any time by letting his beard 
grow. 

But it is certain that the practice of shaving must 
save time for fashionable men, though it must be 
admitted that these are persons whose time is not 
worth saving, who are not likely to make any better 
use of it, and who are always glad when any plea can 
be invented for throwing away a portion of what 
hangs so heavily upon their hands. 

Alas, Sir, what is a Gentleman's time ! 

there are some brains 

Can never lose their time, whate'er they do.^ 

For in former times as much pains were bestowed on 
dressing the beard, as in latter ones upon dressing 
the hair. Sometimes it was braided with threads of 
gold. It was dyed to all colours, according to the 
mode, and cut to all shapes, as you may here learn 
from John Taylor's Superbice Flagellum. 

Now a few lines to paper I wUl put, 

Of men's beards strange and variable cut : 

In which there's some do take as vain a pride, 

As almost in all other things beside. 

Some are reap'd most substantial like a brush, 

Which make a natural wit known by the bush : 

(And in my time of some men I have heard, 

Whose wisdom hath been only wealth and beard,) 

Many of these the proverb well doth fit, 

Which says Bush natural, more hair than wit. 

iMay. 



274 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

Some seem as they were starched stiff and fine, 

Like to the bristles of some angry swine : 

And some (to set their Love's desire on edge) 

Are cut and pruned Uke to a quickset hedge. 

Some Hke a spade, some Hke a fork, some square, 

Some round, some mowed hke stubble, some stark bare, 

Some sharp stiletto fashion, dagger like, 

That may with whispering a man's eyes out pike : 

Some with the hammer cut or Roman T, 

Their beards extravagant reformed must be. 

Some with the quadrate, some triangle fashion, 

Some circular, some oval in translation, 

Some perpendicular in longitude. 

Some like a thicket for their crassitude, 

That heights, depths, breadths, triform, square, oval, round. 

And rules geometrical in beards are found ; 

Beside the upper lips strange variation, 

Corrected from mutation to mutation ; 

As't were from tithing unto tithing sent. 

Pride gives to Pride continual punishment. 

Some {spite their teeth) Uke thatched eaves downward grows, 

And some grow upwards in despite their nose. 

Some their mustachios of such length do keep. 

That very well they may a manger sweep. 

Which in Beer, Ale, or Wine, they drinking plunge, 

And suck the liquor up as't were a sponge ; 

But 'tis a Sloven's beastly Pride I think 

To wash his beard where other men must drink. 

And some (because they will not rob the cup) 

Their upper chaps like pot hooks are turned up, 

The Barbers thus (like Tailors) still must be, 

Acquainted with each cut's variety.^ 

In comparison with such fashions, clean shaving 
is clear gain of time. And to what follies and what 
extravagances would the whiskerandoed macaronies 
of Bond Street and St. James's proceed, if the beard 
once more were, instead of the neckcloth, to "make 
the man !" — They who have put on the whole ar- 

1 Taylor the Water Poet. 



THE DOCTOR 275 

mour of Dandeyism, having their loins girt with — 
stays, and having put on the breast-plate of — buck- 
ram, and having their feet shod — by Hoby ! 

I myself, if I wore a beard, should cherish it, as 
the Cid Campeador did his, for my pleasure. I 
should regale it on a summer's day with rose water ; 
and, without making it an Idol, I should sometimes 
offer incense to it, with a pastille, or with lavender and 
sugar. My children when they were young enough 
for such blandishments would have delighted to 
stroke, and comb, and curl it, and my grand-children 
in their turn would have succeeded to the same course 
of mutual endearment. 

Methinks then I have shown that although the 
Campbellian, or Pseudo-CampbelUan assertion con- 
cerning the languages which might be acquired in the 
same length of time that is consumed in shaving, is 
no otherwise incorrect than as being short of the 
truth, it is not a legitimate consequence from that 
proposition that the time employed in shaving is 
lost time, because the care and culture of a beard 
would exact much more. But the practical utility 
of the proposition, and of the demonstration with 
which it has here been accompanied, is not a whit 
diminished by this admission. For, what man is 
there, who, let his business, private or public, be 
as much as it will, cannot appropriate nine minutes 
a-day to any object that he Hkes ? chapter CLVI 



276 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 



THE doctor's ideas OF LUCK, CHANCE, ACCIDENT, FORTUNE, AND 
MISFORTUNE. THE DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE'S DISTINCTION 
BETWEEN CHANCE AND FORTUNE, WHEREIN NO-MEANING IS 
MISTAKEN FOR MEANING. AGREEMENT IN OPINION BETWEEN 
THE PHILOSOPHER OF DONCASTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER 
OF NORWICH. DISTINCTION BETWEEN UNFORTUNATELY UGLY 
AND WICKEDLY UGLY. DANGER OF PERSONAL CHARMS. 

*Ecrrt yap ws dXrj6(Ji)<; iTrtcfiOeyfia to avTOfiarov, avOpwTrwv ws 
€TVxe Kai dAoyiaraj? cf>povo'vvTwv, kol tov fjikv Xoyov avr^v fxrj 
KaTaXafif3av6vT(i}v, Slol Se rrjv acrOivuav Trjs Kara\i]\f/(.w<;, dAoycJS 
olofi€V(iiv SuxTiTaxOat Tavra, S)v tov \6yov cIttclv ovk ^xovctlv.^ 

Constant. Orat. ad Sanct. C^et. c. vn. 

"Deformity is either natural, voluntary, or adventitious, 
being either caused by God's unseen Providence, {by men nick- 
named, chance,) or by men's cruelty." 

Fuller's Holy State, B.iii.c. 15. 

It may readily be inferred from what has already 
been said of our Philosopher's way of thinking, that 
he was not Hkely to use the words luck, chance, acci- 
dent, fortune or misfortune, with as little reflection 
as is ordinarily shown in applying them. The dis- 
tinction which that fantastic — and yet most like- 
able person — Margaret Duchess of Newcastle, makes 
between Chance and Fortune was far from satisfy- 
ing him. "Fortune," says her Grace (she might have 
been called her Beauty too), "is only various corporeal 
motions of several creatures — designed to one crea- 
ture, or more creatures ; either to that creature, or 
those creatures' advantage, or disadvantage ; if 
advantage, man names it Good Fortune ; if disadvan- 

^ For the word chance really implies a kind of censure, because 
men think at random and irrationally ; and not comprehending their 
reason on account of a weakness of understanding, — they think that 
those things have fallen out by chance whose reason they are unable 
to state. 



THE DOCTOR 277 

tage, man names it 111 Fortune. As for Chance, it 
is the visible eflfects of some hidden cause, and For- 
tune, a sufficient cause to produce such effects ; for 
the conjunction of sufficient causes, doth produce 
such or such effects, which effects could not be pro- 
duced — if any of those causes were wanting : so 
that Chances are but the effects of Fortune." 

The Duchess had just thought enough about this 
to fancy that she had a meaning, and if she had 
thought a Httle more she might have discovered that 
she had none. 

The Doctor looked more accurately both to his 
meaning and his words; but keeping as he did, in 
my poor judgment, the golden mean between super- 
stition and impiety, there was nothing in this that 
savoured of preciseness or weakness, nor of that scru- 
pulosity which is a compound of both. He did not 
suppose that trifles and floccinaucities of which neither 
the causes nor consequences are of the slightest im- 
port, were predestined ; as, for example — whether 
he had beef or mutton for dinner, wore a blue coat 
or a brown — or took off his wig with his right hand 
or with his left. He knew that all things are under 
the direction of almighty and omniscient Goodness ; 
but as he never was unmindful of that Providence 
in its dispensations of mercy and of justice, so he 
never disparaged it. 

Herein the Philosopher of Doncaster agreed with 
the Philosopher of Norwich who saith, "let not for- 
tune — which hath no name in Scripture, have any 
in thy divinity. Let providence, not chance, have 
the honour of thy acknowledgements, and be thy 
CEdipus on contingences. Mark well the paths and 
winding ways thereof ; but be not too wise in the 
construction, or sudden in the application. The 



278 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

hand of Providence writes often by abbreviatures, 
hieroglyphics or short characters, which, hke the 
laconism on the wall, are not to be made out but 
by a hint or key from that spirit which indicted 
them." 

Some ill, he thought, was produced in human 
affairs by applying the term unfortunate to circum- 
stances which were brought about by imprudence. 
A man was unfortunate, if being thrown from his 
horse on a journey, he broke arm or leg, but not if he 
broke his neck in steeple-hunting, or when in full 
cry after a fox ; if he were impoverished by the mis- 
conduct of others, not if he were ruined by his own 
folly and extravagance ; if he suffered in any way by 
the villainy of another, not if he were transported, 
or hanged for his own. 

Neither would he allow that either man or woman 
could with propriety be called, as we not unfrequently 
hear in common speech, unfortunately ugly. Wickedly 
ugly, he said, they might be, and too often were ; 
and in such cases the greater their pretensions to 
beauty, the uglier they were. But goodness has a 
beauty of its own, which is not dependent upon form 
and features, and which makes itself felt and acknowl- 
edged, however otherwise ill-favoured the face may 
be in which it is set. He might have said with Seneca, 
errare mihi visus est qui dixit 

Gratior est pulchro veniens e cor pore virtus; 

nulla enim honestamento eget; ipsa et magnum sui 
decus est, et corpus suum consecrat} None, he would 
say with great earnestness, appeared so ugly to his 

1 1 think he was wrong who said "Virtue is more pleasant when it 
emanates from a beautiful body," for it needs no adornment; it is 
itself its own great ornament and consecrates its body. 



THE DOCTOR 279 

instinctive perception as some of those persons whom 
the world accounted handsome, but upon whom 
pride, or haughtiness, or conceit had set its stamp, 
or who bore in their countenances what no counte- 
nance can conceal, the habitual expression of any 
reigning vice, whether it were sensuality and selfish- 
ness, or envy, hatred, mahce, and uncharitableness. 
Nor could he regard with any satisfaction a fine 
face which had no ill expression, if it wanted a good 
one : he had no pleasure in beholding mere formal 
and superficial beauty, that which lies no deeper than 
the skin, and depends wholly upon "a set of features 
and complexion." He had more dehght, he said, 
in looking at one of the statues in Mr. Weddel's 
collection, than at a beautiful woman if he read in 
her face that she was as little susceptible of any vir- 
tuous emotion as the marble. While, therefore, he 
would not allow that any person could be unfortu- 
nately ugly, he thought that many were unfortunately 
handsome, and that no wise parent would wish his 
daughter to be eminently beautiful, lest what in her 
childhood was naturally and allowably the pride of 
his eye — should, when she grew up, become the grief 
of his heart. It requires no wide range of observa- 
tion to discover that the woman who is married for 
her beauty has little better chance of happiness than 
she who is married for her fortune. "I have known 
very few women in my fife," said Mrs. Montagu, 
"whom extraordinary charms and accompHshments 
did not make unhappy." 

Chapter CLXXX. 



28o SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 



OPINIONS OF THE RABBIS. ANECDOTE OF LADY JEKYLL AND A 
TART REPLY OF WILLIAM WHISTON'S. JEAN d'eSPAGNE. 
QUEEN ELIZABETH OF THE QUORUM QUARUM QUORUM 
GENDER. THE SOCIETY OF GENTLEMEN AGREE WITH 

MAHOMET IN SUPPOSING THAT WOMEN HAVE NO SOULS, BUT 
ARE OF OPINION THAT THE DEVIL IS AN HERMAPHRODITE. 

Sing of the nature of women, and then the song shall be surely 
full of variety, old crotchets, and most sweet closes : It shall 
be humourous, grave, fantastic, amorous, melancholy, sprightly, 
one in all and aU in one. Marston. 

The Doctor had other theological arguments 
in aid of the opinion w^hich he was pleased to sup- 
port. The remark has been made which is curious, 
or in the language of Jeremy Taylor's age, considerable, 
that we read in Genesis how when God saw every- 
thing else which he had made he pronounced that 
it was very good, but he did not say this of the 
woman. 

There are indeed certain Rabbis who affirm that 
Eve was not taken out of Adam's side : but that 
Adam had originally been created with a tail, (herein 
agreeing with the well-known theory of Lord Mon- 
boddo,) and that among the various experiments 
and improvements which were made in his form 
and organization before he was finished, the tail was 
removed as an inconvenient appendage, and of the 
excrescence or superfluous part which was then 
lopped off, the Woman was formed. 

"We are not bound to believe the Rabbis in every- 
thing," the Doctor would say; ''and yet it cannot 
be denied that they have preserved some valuable 
traditions which ought to be regarded with much 
respect." And then by a gentle inclination of the 
head, and a peculiar glance of the eye, he let it be 



THE DOCTOR 281 

understood that this was one of those traditions 
which were entitled to consideration. 

"It was not impossible," he said, "but that a 
different reading in the original text might support 
such an interpretation : the same word in Hebrew 
frequently signified different things, and rib and tail 
might in that language be as near each other in sound 
or as easily miswritten by a hasty hand, or misread 
by an inaccurate eye, as costa and cauda in Latin." 
He did not pretend that this was the case — but 
that it might be so. And by a Hke corruption (for 
to such corruptions all written and even all printed 
books are liable) the text may have represented that 
Eve was taken from the side of her husband instead 
of from that part of the back where the tail grew. 
The dropping of a syllable might occasion it. 

"And this view of the question," he said, "derived 
strong support from that well-known and indubitable 
text wherein the Husband is called the Head; for 
although that expression is in itself most clear and 
significative in its own substantive meaning, it be- 
comes still more beautifully and emphatically appro- 
priate when considered as referring to this interpre- 
tation and tradition, and implying as a direct and 
necessary converse that the Wife is the Tail." 

There is another legend relating to a like but even 
less worthy formation of the first helpmate, and this 
also is ascribed to the Rabbis. According to this 
mythos the rib which had been taken from Adam was 
for a moment laid down, and in that moment a mon- 
key stole it and ran off with it full speed. An Angel 
pursued, and though not in league with the Monkey 
he could have been no good Angel ; for overtaking 
him, he caught him by the Tail, brought it mali- 
ciously back instead of the Rib, and of that Tail 



282 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

was Woman made. What became of the Rib, with 
which the Monkey got clear off, "was never to mortal 
known." 

However the Doctor admitted that on the whole 
the received opinion was the more probable. And 
after making this admission he related an anecdote 
of Lady Jekyll, who was fond of puzzhng herself and 
others with such questions as had been common 
enough a generation before her, in the days of the 
Athenian Oracle. She asked William Whiston of 
berhymed name and eccentric memory, one day at 
her husband's table, to resolve a difficulty which 
occurred to her in the Mosaic account of the creation. 
"Since it pleased God, Sir," said she, "to create the 
Woman out of the Man, why did he form her out 
of the rib rather than any other part?" Whiston 
scratched his head and answered: "Indeed, Madam, 
I do not know, unless it be that the rib is the most 
crooked part of the body." "There !" said her hus- 
band, "you have it now : I hope you are satisfied !" 

He had found in the writings of the Huguenot 
divine, Jean D'Espagne, that Women have never 
had either the gift of tongues, or of miracle ; the 
latter gift, according to this theologian, being with- 
held from them because it properly accompanies 
preaching, and women are forbidden to be preachers. 
A reason for the former exception the Doctor sup- 
phed ; he said it was because one tongue was quite 
enough for them : and he entirely agreed with the 
Frenchman that it must be so, because there could 
have been no peace on earth had it been otherwise. 
But whether the sex worked miracles or not was a 
point which he left the Catholics to contend. Fe- 
male Saints there certainly had been, — "the Lord," 
as Daniel Rogers said, "had gifted and graced many 



THE DOCTOR 283 

women above some men especially with holy affec- 
tions ; I know not," says that divine, "why he should 
do it else (for he is wise and not superfluous in need- 
less things) save that as a Pearl shining through a 
chrystal glass, so her excellency shining through her 
weakness of sex, might show the glory of the work- 
man." He quoted also what the biographer of one 
of the St. Catharines says, "that such a woman 
ought not to be called a woman, but rather an earthly 
Angel, or a heavenly homo : hcBc fcemina, sed potius 
Angelus terrestris, vel si malueris, homo ccdestis di- 
cenda erat, guam fcemina.'^ In like manner the Hun- 
garians thinking it infamous for a nation to be gov- 
erned by a woman — and yet perceiving the great 
advantage of preserving the succession, when the 
crown fell to a female, they called her King Mary, 
instead of Queen. 

And Queen Ehzabeth, rather than be accounted 
of the feminine gender, claimed it as her prerogative 
to be of all three. "A prime officer with a White 
Staff coming into her presence" she willed him to 
bestow a place then vacant upon a person whom she 
named. "May it please your Highness Madam," 
said the Lord, "the disposal of that place pertaineth 
to me by virtue of this White Staff." "True," 
replied the Queen, "yet I never gave you your office 
so absolutely, but that I still reserved myself of the 
Quorum." "Of the Quarum, Madam," returned the 
Lord, presuming, somewhat too far, upon her favour. 
— Whereat she snatched the staff in some anger out 
of his hand, and told him "he should acknowledge 
her of the Quorum, Quarum, Quorum before he had 
it again." 

It was well known indeed to Philosophers, he said, 
that the female is an imperfection or default in na- 



284 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

ture, whose constant design is to form a male ; but 
where strength and temperament are wanting — a 
defective production is the result. Aristotle there- 
fore calls Woman a Monster, and Plato makes it 
a question whether she ought not to be ranked among 
irrational creatures. There were Greek Philosophers, 
who (rightly in his judgment) derived the name of 
^KOrjvr} from 0r}Xv? and alpha privativa, as implying 
that the Goddess of wisdom, though Goddess, was 
nevertheless no female, having nothing of female 
imperfection. And a book unjustly ascribed to the 
learned Acidalius was published in Latin, and after- 
wards in French, to prove that women were not rea- 
sonable creatures, but distinguished from men by 
this specific difference, as well as in sex. 

Mahomet too was not the only person who has 
supposed that women have no souls. In this Chris- 
tian and reformed country, the question was pro- 
pounded to the British Apollo whether there is now, 
or will be at the resurrection any females in Heaven 
— since, says the questioner, there seems to be no 
need of them there ! The Society of Gentlemen 
who, (in imitation of John Dunton, his brother-in- 
law the elder Wesley, and their coadjutors,) had 
undertaken in this Journal to answer all questions, 
returned a grave reply, that sexes being corporeal 
distinctions there could be no such distinction among 
the souls which are now in bliss ; neither could it 
exist after the resurrection, for they who partook of 
eternal life neither marry nor are given in marriage. 

That same Society supposed the Devil to be an 
Hermaphrodite, for though by his roughness they 
said he might be thought of the masculine gender, 
they were led to that opinion because he appeared so 
often in petticoats. Chapter CCVI. 



THE DOCTOR 285 

VALUE OF WOMEN AMONG THE AFGHAUNS. LIGOn's HISTORY OF 
BARBADOES, AND A FAVOURITE STORY OF THE DOCTOR'S 
THEREFROM. CLAUDE SEISSEL, AND THE SALIC LAW. JEWISH 
THANKSGIVING. ETYMOLOGY OF MULIER, WOMAN, AND LASS ; 
— FROM WHICH IT MAY BE GUESSED HOW MUCH IS CONTAINED 
IN THE LIMBO OF ETYMOLOGY. 

If thy name were known that writest in this sort, 

By womankind, unnaturally, giving evil report, 

Whom aU men ought, both young and old, defend with all their 

might. 
Considering what they do deserve of every living wight, 
I wish thou should exiled be from women more and less, 
And not without just cause thou must thyself confess. 

Edward More. 

It w^ould have pleased the Doctor when he was 
upon this topic if he had known how exactly the 
value of women was fixed among the Afghauns, 
by whose laws twelve young women are given as a 
compensation for the slaughter of one man, six for 
cutting off a hand, an ear, or a nose ; three for break- 
ing a tooth, and one for a wound of the scalp. 

By the laws of the Venetians as well as of certain 
Oriental people, the testimony of two women was 
made equivalent to that of one man. And in those 
of the Welsh King Hywel Dda, or Howel Dha, "the 
satisfaction for the murder of a woman, whether 
she be married or not, is half that of her brother," 
which is upon the same standard of relative value. 
By the same laws a woman was not to be admitted 
as bail for a man, nor as witness against him. 

He knew that a French Antiquarian (Claude 
Seissel) had derived the name of the Salic law from 
the Latin word Sal, comme une loy pleine de sel, c'est 
a dire pleine de sapience ^ and this the Doctor thought 

* Sal, as if it were a law full of salt, that is to say, full of wisdom. 

Brantome. 



286 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

a far more rational etymology than what some one 
proposed either seriously or in sport, that the law 
was called Salique because the words Si aliquis and 
Si aliqua were of such frequent occurrence in it. 
"To be born a man-child," says that learned author 
who first composed an Art of Rhetoric in the English 
tongue, "declares a courage, gravity and constancy. 
To be born a woman, declares weakness of spirit, 
neshenes of body, and fickleness of mind." ^ Justin 
Martyr, after saying that the Demons by whom 
according to him the system of heathen mythology 
was composed, spake of Minerva as the first Intel- 
ligence and the daughter of Jupiter, makes this ob- 
servation; "now this we consider most absurd, to 
carry about the image of Intelhgence in a female 
form!" The Father said this as thinking with the 
great French comic poet that a woman never could 
be anything more than a woman. 

Car, voyez-vous, la femme est, comme on dit, mon mattre, 

Un certain animal difficile a connoiire, 

Et de qui la nature est fort encline au mal; 

Et comme un animal est toujours animal, 

Et ne sera jamais qu' animal, quand sa vie 

Dureroit cent mille ans; aussi, sans repartie. 

La femme est toujours femme, et jamais ne sera 

Que femme, tant qu'entier le monde durera? 

A favourite anecdote with our Philosopher was 
of the Barbadoes Planters, one of whom agreed to 
exchange an English maid servant with the other 

^ Wilson. 

^ For see, my master, woman is, as one might say, a kind of animal 
difficult to know, and whose nature is much disposed to evil ; and 
as an animal is always an animal and will never be anything but an 
animal if its life should last a hundred thousand years ; so, without 
gainsaying, woman is always woman, and will never be anything 
but woman, as long as the world will last. 



THE DOCTOR 287 

for a bacon pig, weight for weight, four-pence per 
pound to be paid for the overplus, if the balance 
should be in favour of the pig, sixpence if it were on 
the Maid's side. But when they were weighed in 
the scales, Honour, who was ''extreme fat, lazy and 
good for nothing," so far outweighed the pig, that 
the pig's owner repented of his improvident bargain, 
and refused to stand to it. Such a case Ligon ob- 
serves, when he records this notable story, seldom 
happened ; but the Doctor cited it as showing what 
had been the relative value of women and pork in 
the West Indies. And observe, he would say, of 
white women, EngHsh, Christian women, — not of 
poor heathen blacks, who are considered as brutes, 
bought and sold Hke brutes, worked like brutes — 
and treated worse than any Government ought to 
permit even brutes to be treated. 

However, that women were in some respects 
better than men, he did not deny. He doubted not 
but that Cannibals thought them so ; for we know 
by the testimony of such Cannibals as happen to 
have tried both, that white men are considered better 
meat than negroes, and EngHshmen than French- 
men, and there could be Httle doubt that, for the 
same reason, women would be preferred to men. 
Yet this was not the case with animals, as was proved 
by buck venison, ox beef, and wether mutton. The 
tallow of the female goat would not make as good 
candles as that of the male. Nature takes more 
pains in elaborating her nobler work; and that the 
male, as being the nobler, was that which Nature 
finished with greatest care must be evident, he 
thought, to any one who called to mind the difference 
between cock and hen birds, a difference discover- 
able even in the egg, the larger and finer eggs, with a 



288 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

denser white and a richer yolk, containing male 
chicks. Other and more curious observations had 
been made tending to the same conclusion, but he 
omitted them, as not perhaps suited for general 
conversation, and not exactly capable of the same 
degree of proof. It was enough to hint at them. 

The great Ambrose Parey, (the John Hunter and 
the Baron Larrey of the sixteenth century,) has 
brought forward many instances wherein women have 
been changed into men, instances which are not 
fabulous: but he observes, "you shall find in no 
history, men that have degenerated into women; 
for nature always intends and goes from the imper- 
fect to the more perfect, but never basely from the 
more perfect to the imperfect." It was a rule in the 
Roman law, that when husband and wife overtaken 
by some common calamity perished at the same time, 
and it could not be ascertained which had Hved the 
longest, the woman should be presumed to have 
expired the first, as being by nature the feeblest. 
And for the same reason if it had not been noted 
whether brother or sister being twins came first in 
the world, the legal conclusion was that the boy 
being the stronger was the first born. 

And from all these facts he thought the writer 
must be a judicious person who published a poem 
entitled the Great Birth of Man, or Excellence of 
his Creation over Woman. 

Therefore according to the Bramins, the widow 
who burns herself with the body of her husband, 
will in her next state be born a male ; but the widow, 
who refuses to make this self-sacrifice, will never be 
anything better than a woman, let her be born again 
as often as she may. 

Therefore it is that the Jew at this day begins 



THE DOCTOR 289 

his public prayer with a thanksgiving to his Maker, 
for not having made him a woman ; — an escape for 
which the Greek philosopher was thankful. One of the 
things which shocked a Moor who visited England 
was to see dogs, women, and dirty shoes, permitted 
to enter a place of worship, the Mahometans, as is 
well known, excluding all three from their Mosques. 
Not that all Mahometans believe that women have 
no souls. There are some who think it more prob- 
able they have, and these more Hberal Mussulmen 
hold that there is a separate Paradise for them, 
because they say, if the women were admitted into 
the Men's Paradise, it would cease to be Paradise, 
— there would be an end of all peace there. It was 
probably the same reason which induced Origen to 
advance an opinion that after the day of Judgment 
women will be turned into men. The opinion has 
been condemned among his heresies ; but the Doctor 
maintained that it was a reasonable one, and almost 
demonstrable upon the supposition that we are all 
to be progressive in a future state. "There was, 
however," he said, "according to the Jews a peculiar 
privilege and happiness reserved for them, that is for 
all those of their chosen nation, during the temporal 
reign of the Messiah, for every Jewish woman is then 
to He in every day!" 

"I never," says Bishop Reynolds, "read of more 
dangerous falls in the Saints than were Adam's, 
Samson's, David's, Solomon's, and Peter's ; and 
behold in all these, either the first enticers, or the 
first occasioners, are women, A weak creature may 
be a strong tempter : nothing too impotent or useless 
for the Devil's service." Fuller among his Good 
Thoughts has this paragraph : — "I find the natural 
Philosopher making a character of the Lion's disposi- 



290 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

tion, amongst other his quahties, reporteth, first, 
that the Lion feedeth on men, and afterwards (if 
forced with extremity of hunger,) on women. Satan 
is a roaring Lion seeking whom he may devour. 
Only he inverts the method, and in his bill of fare 
takes the second first. Ever since he over-tempted 
our grandmother Eve, encouraged with success he 
hath preyed first on the weaker sex." 

"Sit not in the midst of women," saith the son of 
Sirach in his Wisdom, "for from garments cometh 
a moth, and from women wickedness." "Behold, 
this have I found, saith the Preacher, counting one 
by one to find out the account; which yet my soul 
seeketh, but I find not : one man among a thousand 
have I found ; but a woman among all those have 
I not found." 

"It is a bad thing," said St. Augustine, "to look 
upon a woman, a worse to speak to her, and to touch 
her is worst of all." John Bunyan admired the 
wisdom of God for making him shy of the sex, and 
boasted that it was a rare thing to see him "carry it 
pleasant towards a woman." "The common salu- 
tation of women," said he, "I abhor, their company 
alone I cannot away with ! " John, the great Tinker, 
thought with the son of Sirach, that "better is the 
churKshness of a man, than a courteous woman, a 
woman which bringeth shame and reproach." And 
Menu the lawgiver of the Hindoos hath written that 
"it is the nature of women in this world to cause the 
seduction of men." And John Moody in the play, 
says, "I ha' seen a Httle of them, and I find that the 
best, when she's minded, won't ha' much goodness 
to spare." A wife has been called a daily calamity, 
and they who thought least unfavourably of the 
sex have pronounced it a necessary evil. 



THE DOCTOR 291 

^'Mulier, quasi mollior,'' saith Varro; a derivation 
upon which Dr. Featley thus commenteth : "Women 
take their name in Latin from tenderness or softness, 
because they are usually of a softer temper than 
men, and much more subject to passions, especially 
of fear, grief, love, and longing ; their fear is almost 
perpetual, their grief immoderate, their love ardent, 
and their longing most vehement. They are the 
weaker vessels, not only weaker in body than men, 
and less able to resist violence, but also weaker in 
mind and less able to hold out in temptations ; and 
therefore the Devil first set upon the woman as 
conceiving it a matter of more facility to supplant her 
than the man." And they are such dissemblers, 
says the Poet, 

As if their mother had been made 
Only of all the falsehood of the man, 
Disposed into that rib. 

"Look indeed at the very name," said the Doctor, 
putting on his gravest look of provocation to the 
ladies. — "Look at the very name — Woman, evi- 
dently meaning either man's woe — or abbreviated 
from woe to man, because by woman was woe brought 
into the world." 

And when a girl is called a lass, who does not per- 
ceive how that common word must have arisen? 
Who does not see that it may be directly traced to 
a mournful interjection, alas ! breathed sorrowfully 
forth at the thought the girl, the lovely and innocent 
creature upon whom the beholder has fixed his medi- 
tative eye, would in time become a woman, — a 
woe to man ! 

There are other tongues in which the name is not 
less significant. The two most notoriously obstinate 



292 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

things in the world are a mule and a pig. Now there 
is one language in which pige means a young woman : 
and another in which woman is denoted by the word 
mulier: which word, whatever grammarians may 
pretend, is plainly a comparative, appHed exclusively 
and with peculiar force to denote the only creature 
in nature which is more muHsh than a mule. Com- 
ment, says a Frenchman, pourroit-on aymer les Dames, 
puis gu'elles se nomment ainsi du dam et dommage 

qu'elles apportent aux hommesl ^ ^ ^^ttttt 

^ ^'^ Chapter CCVIII. 



VAMETY OF STILES. 

Qualis vir, talis oratio? 

Erasmi Adagia. 

Authors are often classed, like painters, according 
to the school in which they have been trained, or to 
which they have attached themselves. But it is 
not so easy to ascertain this in literature as it is in 
painting; and if some of the critics who have thus 
endeavoured to class them were sent to school them- 
selves, and there whipt into a little more learning, 
so many silly classifications of this kind would not 
mislead those readers who suppose, in the simpHcity 
of their own good faith, that no man presumes to 
write upon a subject which he does not understand. 

Stiles may with more accuracy be classed, and for 
this purpose metals might be used in Kterature as 
they are in heraldry. We might speak of the golden 
stile, the silver, the iron, the leaden, the pinchbeck 
and the bronze. 

1 How can one love the Ladies (Dames), since they are so called 
from the dam (damnation) and dommage (mischief) which they bring 
to men. Bouchet. ^ ^g xkt man, such is the speech. 



THE DOCTOR 293 

Others there are which cannot be brought under 
any of these appellations. There is the Cyclopean 
stile, of which Johnson is the great example ; the 
sparkhng, or micacious, possessed by Hazlitt, and 
much affected in Reviews and Magazines ; the 
oleaginous, in which Mr. Charles Butler bears the 
palm, or more appropriately the olive branch : the 
fulminating — which is Walter Landor's, whose con- 
versation has been compared to thunder and Ught- 
ning ; the impenetrable — which is sometimes used 
by Mr. Coleridge ; and the Jeremy-Benthamite, 
which cannot with propriety be distinguished by any 
other name than one derived from its unparalleled 
and unparallelable author. 

Ex stilo, says Erasmus, perpendimus ingenium 
cujusqiie, omnemgue mentis hahitum ex ipsa dictionis 
ratione conjectamus. Est enim tumidi, stilus turgidus; 
abjecti, humilis, exanguis; as peri, scaber; amaru- 
lenti, tristis ac maledicus; deliciis affluentis, picturatus 
ac dissolutus; Breviter, omne vitcB simulacrum, omnis 
animi vis, in oratione perinde ut in speculo reprcesen- 
tatur, ac vel intima pectoris, arcanis quihusdam vestigiis, 
deprehenduntur . ^ 

There is the lean stile, of which Nathaniel Lardner 
and William Coxe may be held up as examples ; and 
there is the larded one, exemplified in Bishop An- 
drewes, and in Burton, the Anatomist of Melancholy ; 

1 From the style we infer the character, and conjecture every 
habit of the mind from the manner of the diction. For in a pomp- 
ous person the style is inflated ; in a mean one, groveling and spirit- 
less; in a harsh person it is rough, in an embittered one sad and 
abusive, in one given to pleasure it is embroidered and disconnected. 
In short every image of life, every faculty of the mind, is represented 
in a speech exactly as in a mirror and the inmost characters of the 
heart are discovered by certain mysterious traces. 



294 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

Jeremy Taylor's is both a flowery and a fruitful 
stile : Harvey the Meditationist's a weedy one. 
There are the hard and dry ; the weak and watery ; 
the manly and the womanly ; the juvenile and the 
anile ; the round and the pointed ; the flashy and the 
fiery ; the lucid and the opaque ; the luminous and 
the tenebrous ; the continuous and the disjointed. 
The washy and the slapdash are both much in vogue, 
especially in magazines and reviews ; so are the barbed 
and the venomed. The High-Slang stile is exhibited 
in the Court Journal and in Mr. Colburn's novels ; 
the Low-Slang in Tom and Jerry, Bell's Life in 
London, and most Magazines, those especially which 
are of most pretensions. 

The flatulent stile, the feverish, the aguish, and 
the atrabilious, are all as common as the diseases of 
body from which they take their name, and of mind 
in which they originate ; and not less common than 
either is the dyspeptic stile, proceeding from a weak- 
ness in the digestive faculty. 

Learned, or if not learned. Dear Reader, I had 
much to say of stile, but the under written passage 
from that beautiful book, Xenophon's Memorabilia 
Socratis, has induced me, as the Latins say, stilum 
vertere, and to erase a paragraph written with ink in 
which the gall predominated. 

'Eyo) 8' ovv Koi avTos, u) AvTic^wv, wa-irep aXXos rts r) tTTTro) 
dya^co rj kvvI rj 6pvi6i ■^Serai, ovto) Koi (.tl fxaXXov ypofxai TOi? 
</>t'Aois dya^ois • kcli, idv tl (TX^x) dyaOov oiodcTKU), koi dXXois (tvvl- 
CTTrffXL, Trap' wv av lyyw/xat wcfteXyjaeaOaL tl avrous ets dpeTrjv ' Kai 
Tovs Oyjaavpov'i Tu>v TrdXaL aocf)u)v dvopoJv, ous CKeivoi KaTeKiTrov iv 
/8i/3Aiois y/3a<^evTes, dveA-trrwv Koivr} (tvv rots <^tAots OLep)(OfJuii. • 
Kal dv Tl opoyp^v dyaOov, eKXeyopeOa, kol p.iya vop.L^op.€V Kcpoos, 
i^v dX^XoL, i><i>lXtp.0L ytyv«/x€^a.i Interchapter XXIL 

^ Just as some persons, O Antiphon, take pleasure in a good horse 
or a dog or a bird, so do I take even greater pleasure in good friends. 



THE DOCTOR 295 

There is nothing more desirable in composition 
than perspicuity ; and in perspicuity precision is 
implied. Of the Author who has attained it in his 
style, it may indeed be said, omne tulit punctum, so 
far as relates to style ; for all other graces, those only 
excepted which only genius can impart, will necessarily 
follow. Nothing is so desirable, and yet it should 
seem that nothing is so difficult. He who thinks 
least about it when he is engaged in composition will 
be most likely to attain it, for no man ever attained 
it by labouring for it. Read all the treatises upon 
composition that ever were composed, and you will 
find nothing which conveys so much useful instruction 
as the account given by John Wesley of his own way 
of writing. "I never think of my style," says he; 
"but just set down the words that come first. Only 
when I transcribe any thing for the press, then I 
think it my duty to see that every phrase be clear, 
pure and proper : conciseness, which is now as it 
were natural to me, brings quantum sufficit of strength. 
If after all I observe any stiff expression, I throw it 
out neck and shoulders." Let your words take their 
course freely; they will then dispose themselves in 
their natural order, and make your meaning plain : 
— that is, Mr. Author, supposing you have a mean- 
ing; and that it is not an insidious, and for that 
reason, a covert one. With all the head-work that 
there is in these volumes, and all the heart-work too, 
I have not bitten my nails over a single sentence 
which they contain. I do not say that my hand has 

If I have anything good I communicate it, and I introduce them to 
others by whom I think they may profit in the attainment of virtue. 
And together with my friends I read and discuss those treasures of 
the wise men of old which they have left written in books, and if 
we observe anything good we cull it and think it a great gain if we 
can thus be of help to one another. 



296 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

not sometimes been passed across my brow; nor 
that the fingers of my left hand have not played 
with the hair upon my forehead, — like Thalaba's 
with the grass that grew beside Oneiza's tomb. 

Chapter LVIII. 



A WISHING INTERCHAPTER WHICH IS SHORTLY TERMINATED, ON 
SUDDENLY RECOLLECTING THE WORDS OF CLEOPATRA, — 
"wishers were ever POOLS." 

Begin betimes, occasion's bald behind, 
Stop not thine opportunity, for fear too late 
Thou seek'st for much, but canst not compass it. 

Marlowe. 

Plust a Dieu que feusse presentement cent soixante 
et dixhuit millions d'or! says a personage in Rabe- 
lais : ho, comment je triumpherois 1 ^ 

It was a good, honest, large, capacious wish ; 
and in wishing, it is as well to wish for enough. By 
enough, in the way of riches, a man is said to mean 
always something more than he has. Without 
exposing myself to any such censorious remark, I 
will, like the person above quoted, limit my desires to 
a positive sum, and wish for just one million a year. 

"And what would you do with it?" says Mr. 
Sobersides. 

"Attendez encores un pen, avec demie once de 
patience J^^ 

I now esteem my venerable self 

As brave a fellow, as if all that pelf 

Were sure mine own ; and I have thought a way 

Already how to spend. 

^ Would to God that I had at this instant one hundred and seventy- 
eight millions in gold ! Oh, how I should triumph ! 
* Wait yet a Uttle, with half an ounce of patience. 



THE DOCTOR 297 

And first, for my private expenditure, I would 
either buy a house to my mind, or build one ; and it 
should be such as a house ought to be, which I once 
heard a glorious agriculturist define "a house that 
should have in it everything that is voluptuous, and 
necessary and right." In my acceptation of that 
fehcitous definition, I request the reader to under- 
stand that everything which is right is intended, and 
nothing but what is perfectly so : that is to say I 
mean every possible accommodation conducive to 
health and comfort. It should be large enough for 
my friends, and not so large as to serve as an hotel 
for my acquaintance, and I would five in it at the 
rate of five thousand a year, beyond which no real 
and reasonable enjoyment is to be obtained by 
money. 

I would neither keep hounds, nor hunters, nor 
running horses. . 

I would neither soHcit nor accept a peerage. I 
would not go into Parliament. I would take no part 
whatever in what is called public Hfe, farther than 
to give my vote at an election against a Whig, or 
against any one who would give his in favour of the 
Catholic Question. 

I would not wear my coat quite so threadbare as 
I do at present : but I would still keep to my old 
shoes, as long as they would keep to me. 

But stop — Cleopatra adopted some wizard's words 
when she said ''Wishers were ever fools!" 

Interchapter XXV. 



298 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 



ST. PANTALEON OF NICOMEDIA IN BITHYNIA — HIS HISTORY, 
AND SOME FURTHER PARTICULARS NOT TO BE FOUND ELSE- 
WHERE. 

Non dicea le cose senza il quia ; 
Che il dritto distingueva dal mancino, 
E dicea pane al pane, e vino al vino} 

Bertoldo. 

This Interchapter is dedicated to St. Pantaleon, of 
Nicomedia in Bithynia, student in medicine and 
practitioner in miracles, whose martyrdom is com- 
memorated by the Church of Rome on the 27th of 

July. 

SANCTE PANTALEON, ORA PRO NOBIS ! 

This I say to be on the safe side ; though between 
ourselves, reader, Nicephorus, and Usuardus, and 
Vincentius, and St. Antoninus (notwithstanding his 
sanctity) have written so many lies concerning him, 
that it is very doubtful whether there ever was such 
a person, and still more doubtful whether there be 
such a Saint. However the body which is venerated 
under his name is just as venerable as if it had really 
belonged to him, and works miracles as well. 

It is a tradition in Corsica that when St. Pantaleon 
was beheaded the executioner's sword was converted 
into a wax taper, and the weapons of all his attend- 
ants into snuffers, and that the head rose from the 
block and sung. In honour of this miracle the Corsi- 
cans, as late as the year 1775, used to have their 
swords consecrated, or charmed, — by laying them 
on the altar while a mass was performed to St. Pan- 
taleon. 

^ He did not call things without a reason ; he distinguished the 
right from the left, bread he called bread, and wine he called wine. 



THE DOCTOR 299 

But what have I, who am writing in January 
instead of July, and who am no papist, and who 
have the happiness of living in a protestant country, 
and was baptized moreover by a right old English 
name, — what have I to do with St. Pantaleon ? 
Simply this, — my new pantaloons are just come 
home, and that they derive their name from the 
aforesaid Saint is as certain, — as that it was high 
time I should have a new pair. 

St. Pantaleon, though the tutelary Saint of Oporto, 
(which city boasteth of his relics,) was in more es- 
pecial fashion at Venice : and so many of the grave 
Venetians were in consequence named after him, 
that the other ItaHans called them generally Panta- 
loni in derision, — - as an Irishman is called Pat, and 
as Sawney is with us synonymous with Scotchman, 
or Taffy for a son of Cadwallader and votary of 
St. David and his leek. Now the Venetians wore 
long small clothes ; these as being the national 
dress were called Pantaloni also ; and when the 
trunk-hose of EUzabeth's days went out of fashion, 
we received them from France, with the name of 
pantaloons. 

Pantaloons then, as of Venetian and Magnifico 
parentage, and under the patronage of an eminent 
Saint, are doubtless an honourable garb. They are 
also of honourable extraction, being clearly of the 
Braccas family. For it is this part of our dress by 
which we are more particularly distinguished from 
the Oriental and inferior nations, and also from the 
abominable Romans, whom our ancestors. Heaven 
be praised ! subdued. Under the miserable reign 
of Honorius and Arcadius, these Lords of the World 
thought proper to expel the Braccarii, or breeches- 
makers, from their capitals, and to prohibit the use 



300 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

of this garment, thinking it a thing unworthy that 
the Romans should wear the habit of Barbarians : 
— and truly it was not fit that so effeminate a race 
should wear the breeches. 

The Pantaloons are of this good Gothic family. 
The fashion having been disused for more than a 
century was re-introduced some five and twenty 
years ago, and still prevails so much — that I who 
like to go with the stream, and am therefore content 
to have fashions thrust upon me, have just received 
a new pair from London. 

The coming of a box from the Great City is an 
event which is always looked to by the juveniles of 
this family with some degree of impatience. In the 
present case there was especial cause for such joyful 
expectation ; for the package was to contain no less 
a treasure than the story of the Lioness and the 
Exeter Mail, with appropriate engravings represent- 
iag the whole of that remarkable history, and those 
engravings emblazoned in appropriate colours. This 
adventure had excited an extraordinary degree of 
interest among us, when it was related in the news- 
papers : and no sooner had a book upon the subject 
been advertised, than the young ones, one and all, 
were in an uproar, and tumultuously petitioned that 
I would send for it, — to which, thinking the prayer 
of the petitioners reasonable, I graciously assented. 
And moreover there was expected, among other 
things ejusdem generis, one of those very few per- 
quisites which the all-annihilating hand of Modern 
Reform has not retrenched in our public ofiices, — 
an Almanac or Pocket-Book for the year, curiously 
bound and gilt, three only being made up in this 
magnificent manner for three magnificent personages, 
from one of whom this was a present to my lawful 



THE DOCTOR 301 

Governess. Poor Mr. Bankes ! the very hairs of his 
wig will stand erect, 

Like quills upon the fretful porcupine, 

when he reads of this flagrant misapplication of 
public money ; and Mr. Whitbread would have 
founded a motion upon it, had he survived the battle 
of Waterloo. 

There are few things in which so many vexatious 
delays are continually occurring, and so many ras- 
cally frauds are systematically practised, as in the 
carriage of parcels. It is indeed much to be wished 
that Government could take into its hands the con- 
veyance of goods as well as letters ; for in this country 
whatever is done by Government is done punctually 
and honourably ; — what corruption there is lies 
among the people themselves, among whom honesty 
is certainly less general than it was half a century 
ago. Three or four days elapsed on each of which 
the box ought to have arrived. "Will it come to- 
day, Papa?" was the morning question: "why does 
not it come?" was the complaint at noon; and 
"when will it come?" was the query at night. But 
in childhood the delay of hope is only the prolonga- 
tion of enjoyment ; and through life indeed, hope, 
if it be of the right kind, is the best food of happiness. 
"The House of Hope," says Hafiz, "is built upon a 
weak foundation." If it be so, I say, the fault is in 
the builder : Build it upon a Rock, and it will stand. 

Expectata dies, — long looked for, at length it 
came. The box was brought into the parlour, the 
ripping-chisel was produced, the nails were easily 
forced, the cover was lifted, and the paper which 
lay beneath it was removed. "There's the panta- 
loons !" was the first exclamation. The clothes being 



$02 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

taken out, there appeared below a paper parcel, 
secured with a string. As I never encourage any- 
undue impatience, the string was deliberately and 
carefully untied. Behold, the splendid Pocket-Book, 
and the history of the Lioness and the Exeter Mail, 
— had been forgotten ! 

St. Peter ! St. Peter ! 

"Pray, Sir," says the Reader, "as I perceive you 
are a person who have a reason for everything you 
say, may I ask wherefore you call upon St. Peter on 
this occasion?" 

You may, Sir. 

A reason there is, and a valid one. But what 
that reason is, I shall leave the commentators to dis- 
cover ; observing only, for the sake of lessening their 
difficulty, that the Peter upon whom I have called is 
not St. Peter of Verona, he having been an In- 
quisitor, one of the Devil's Saints, and therefore in 
no condition at this time to help anybody who in- 
vokes him. 

"Well, Papa, you must write about them, and 
they must come in the next parcel," said the children. 
Job never behaved better, who was a scriptural 
Epictetus : nor Epictetus, who was a heathen Job. 

1 kissed the Uttle philosophers ; and gave them 
the Bellman's verses, which happened to come in the 
box, with horrific cuts of the Marriage at Cana, the 
Ascension, and other portions of gospel history, and 
the Bellman himself ; — so it was not altogether a 
blank. We agreed that the disappointment should 
be an adjourned pleasure, and then I turned to 
inspect the pantaloons. 

I cannot approve the colour. It hath too much of 
the purple ; not that imperial die by which ranks 
were discriminated at Constantinople, nor the more 



THE DOCTOR 303 

sober tint which Episcopacy affecteth. Nor is it 
the bloom of the plum ; — still less can it be said to 
resemble the purple hght of love. No ! it is rather a 
hue brushed from the raven's wing, a black purple ; 
not Night and Aurora meeting, which would make 
the darkness blush ; but Erebus and Ultramarine. 

Doubtless it hath been selected for me because of 
its alamodality, — a good and pregnant word, on the 
fitness of which some German, whose name appears 
to be erroneously as well as uncouthly written Gea- 
moenus, is said to have composed a dissertation. Be 
pleased, Mr. Todd, to insert it in the interleaved 
copy of your dictionary ! 

Thankful I am that they are not Hke Jean de 
Bart's full-dress breeches ; for when that famous 
sailor went to court he is said to have worn breeches 
of cloth of gold, most uncomfortably as well as splen- 
didly Kned with cloth of silver. 

He would never have worn them, had he read 
Lampridius, and seen the opinion of the Emperor 
Alexander Severus, as by that historian recorded : 
in lined autem aurum mitti etiam dementiam judicabat, 
cum asperitati adderetur rigor. 

The word breeches has, I am well aware, been 
deemed ineffable, and therefore not to be written — 
because not to be read. But I am encouraged to use 
it by the high and mighty authority of the Anti- 
Jacobin Review. Mr. Stephens having in his Mem- 
oirs of Home Tooke used the word small-clothes 
is thus reprehended for it by the indignant Censor. 

"His breeches he calls small-clothes; — the first 
time we have seen this bastard term, the offspring of 
gross ideas and disgusting affectation in print, in any- 
thing Hke a book. It is scandalous to see men 
of education thus employing the most vulgar Ian- 



304 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

guage, and corrupting their native tongue by the 
introduction of illegitimate words. But this is the 
age of affectation. Even our fishwomen and milk- 
maids affect to blush at the only word which can 
express this part of a man's dress, and Hsp small- 
clothes with as many airs as a would-be woman of 
fashion is accustomed to display. That this folly is 
indebted for its birth to grossness of imagination in 
those who evince it, will not admit of a doubt. From 
the same source arises the ridiculous and too frequent 
use of a French word for a part of female dress ; as 
if the mere change of language could operate a change 
either in the thing expressed, or in the idea annexed 
to the expression ! Surely, surely, EngHsh women, 
who are justly celebrated for good sense and decorous 
manners, should rise superior to such pitiful, such 
paltry, such low-minded affectation." 

Here I must observe that one of these redoubtable 
critics is thought to have a partiaUty for breeches of 
the Dutch make. It is said also that he likes to cut 
them out for himself, and to have pockets of capacious 
size, wide and deep ; and a large fob, and a large al- 
lowance of hning. 

The Critic who so very much disHkes the word 
small-clothes, and argues so vehemently in behalf of 
breeches, uses no doubt that edition of the scriptures 
that is known by the name of the Breeches Bible. 

I ought to be grateful to the Anti- Jacobin Review. 
It assists in teaching me my duty to my neighbour, 
and enabling me to live in charity with all men. 
For I might perhaps think that nothing could be so 
wrong-headed as Leigh Hunt, so wrong-hearted as 
Cobbett, so foohsh as one, so blackguard as the 
other, so impudently conceited as both, — if it were 
not for the Anti- Jacobin. I might beHeve that noth- 



THE DOCTOR 305 

ing could be so bad as the coarse, bloody and brutal 
spirit of the vulgar Jacobin, — if it were not for the 
An ti- Jacobin. 

Blessings on the man for his love of pure English ! 
It is to be expected that he will make great progress 
in it, through his familiarity with fishwomen and 
milkmaids ; for it implies no common degree of fa- 
miHarity with those interesting classes to talk to them 
about breeches, and discover that they prefer to call 
them small-clothes. ^ „,, 

INTERCHAPTER XX. 



THE STORY OF THE THREE BEARS. 

A tale which may content the minds 
Of learned men and grave philosophers. 

Gascoigne. 

Once upon a time there were Three Bears, who 
lived together in a house of their own, in a wood. 
One of them was a Little, Small, Wee Bear ; and one 
was a Middle-sized Bear, and the other was a Great, 
Huge Bear. They had each a pot for their porridge, 
a Httle pot for the Little, Small, Wee Bear; and a 
middle-sized pot for the Middle Bear, and a great 
pot for the Great, Huge Bear. And they had each 
a chair to sit in ; a Httle chair for the Little, Small, 
Wee Bear; and a middle-sized chair for the Middle 
Bear; and a great chair for the Great, Huge Bear. 
And they had each a bed to sleep in ; a Httle bed for 
the Little, SmaU, Wee Bear ; and a middle-sized bed 
for the Middle Bear ; and a great bed for the Great, 
Huge Bear. 

One day, after they had made the porridge for their 
breakfast, and poured it into their porridge-pots, 



3o6 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

they walked out into the wood while the porridge was 
cooling, that they might not burn their mouths, by 
beginning too soon to eat it. And while they were 
walking, a little old Woman came to the house. She 
could not have been a good, honest old Woman ; for 
first she looked in at the window, and then she peeped 
in at the keyhole ; and seeing nobody in the house, 
she lifted the latch. The door was not fastened, 
because the Bears were good Bears, who did nobody 
any harm, and never suspected that any body would 
harm them. So the Kttle old Woman opened the 
door, and went in; and weU pleased she was when 
she saw the porridge on the table. If she had been 
a good Kttle old Woman, she would have waited till 
the Bears came home, and then, perhaps, they would 
have asked her to breakfast ; for they were good 
Bears, — a Httle rough or so, as the manner of Bears 
is, but for all that very good-natured and hospitable. 
But she was an impudent, bad old Woman, and set 
about helping herself. 

So first she tasted the porridge of the Great, Huge 
Bear, and that was too hot for her ; and she said a 
bad word about that. And then she tasted the por- 
ridge of the Middle Bear, and that was too cold for 
her; and she said a bad word about that, too. And 
then she went to the porridge of the Little, Small, 
Wee Bear, and tasted that; and that was neither 
too hot, nor too cold, but just right; and she Hked 
it so well, that she ate it all up : but the naughty old 
Woman said a bad word about the little porridge- 
pot, because it did not hold enough for her. 

Then the Kttle old Woman sate down in the chair 
of the Great, Huge Bear, and that was too hard for 
her. And then she sate down in the chair of the 
Middle Bear, and that was too soft for her. And 



THE DOCTOR 307 

then she sate down in the chair of the Little, Small, 
Wee Bear, and that was neither too hard, nor too 
soft, but just right. So she seated herself in it, and 
there she sate till the bottom of the chair came out, 
and down came hers, plump upon the ground. And 
the naughty old Woman said a wicked word about 
that too. 

Then the little old Woman went up stairs into the 
bed-chamber in which the three Bears slept. And 
first she lay down upon the bed of the Great, ITuge 
Bear; but that was too high at the head for her. 
And next she lay down upon the bed of the Middle 
Bear; and that was too high at the foot for her. 
And then she lay down upon the bed of the Little, 
Small, Wee Bear; and that was neither too high at 
the head, nor at the foot, but just right. So she 
covered herself up comfortably, and lay there till 
she fell fast asleep. 

By this time the Three Bears thought their por- 
ridge would be cool enough ; so they came home to 
breakfast. Now the Kttle old Woman had left the 
spoon of the Great, Huge Bear, standing in his por- 
ridge. 

♦♦ ^omeboD^ Ijasf been at m^ jJorriDge ! '* 

said the Great, Huge Bear, in his great, rough, grufif 
voice. And when the Middle Bear looked at his, he 
saw that the spoon was standing in it too. They 
were wooden spoons ; if they had been silver ones, 
the naughty old Woman would have put them in 
her pocket. 

" Somebody has been at my porridge! " 

said the Middle Bear, in his middle voice. 



3o8 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

Then the Little, Small, Wee Bear looked at his, 
and there was the spoon in the porridge-pot, but the 
porridge was all gone. 

"Somebody has been at my porridge, and has eaten it all up l^' 

said the Little, Small, Wee Bear, in his little, small, 
wee voice. 

Upon this the Three Bears, seeing that some one 
had entered their house, and eaten up the Little, 
Small, Wee Bear's breakfast, began to look about 
them. Now the little old Woman had not put the 
hard cushion straight when she rose from the chair of 
the Great, Huge Bear. 

♦♦ ^omthon^ l)as( been slitting in m^ c^air ! ** 

said the Great, Huge Bear, in his great, rough, gruff 
voice. 

And the Kttle old Woman had squatted down the 
soft cushion of the Middle Bear. 

" Somebody has been sitting in my chair! " 

said the Middle Bear, in his middle voice. 

And you know what the little old Woman had 
done to the third chair. 

"Somebody has been sitting in my chair, and has sate the bottom 
of it out I" 

said the Little, Small, Wee Bear, in his little, small, 
wee voice. 

Then the Three Bears thought it necessary that 
they should make farther search ; so they went up 
stairs into their bed-chamber. Now the little old 
Woman had pulled the pillow of the Great, Huge 
Bear, out of its place. 



THE DOCTOR 309 

♦* ^onteboti^ liast been l^ing in m^ beo ! ** 

said the Great, Huge Bear, in his great, rough, gruff 
voice. 

And the little old Woman had pulled the bolster 
of the Middle Bear out of its place. 

" Somebody has been lying in my bed! " 

said the Middle Bear, in his middle voice. 

And when the Little, Small, Wee Bear came to 
look at his bed, there was the bolster in its place ; 
and the pillow in its place upon the bolster ; and upon 
the pillow was the little old Woman's ugly, dirty head, 
— which was not in its place, for she had no business 
there. 

"Somebody has been lying in my bed, — and here she is I" 

said the Little, Small, Wee Bear, in his little, small, 
wee voice. 

The little old Woman had heard in her sleep the 
great, rough, gruff voice of the Great, Huge Bear ; but 
she was so fast asleep that it was no more to her than 
the roaring of wind , or the rumbling of thunder. And 
she had heard the middle voice of the Middle Bear, 
but it was only as if she had heard some one speak- 
ing in a dream. But when she heard the Httle, small, 
wee voice of the Little, Small, Wee Bear, it was so 
sharp, and so shrill, that it awakened her at once. 
Up she started ; and when she saw the Three Bears 
on one side of the bed, she tumbled herself out at 
the other, and ran to the window. Now the window 
was open, because the Bears, like good, tidy Bears, 
as they were, always opened their bed-chamber 
window when they got up in the morning. Out 
the little old Woman jumped; and whether she 



3IO SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

broke her neck in the fall ; or ran into the wood and 
was lost there; or found her way out of the wood, 
and was taken up by the constable and sent to the 
House of Correction for a vagrant as she was, I can- 
not tell. But the Three Bears never saw anything 
more of her. Chapter CXXIX. 



MEMOIR OF THE CATS OF GRETA HALL. 

For as much, most excellent Edith May, as you 
must always feel a natural and becoming concern 
in whatever relates to the house wherein you were 
born, and in which the first part of your Hfe has thus 
far so happily been spent, I have, for your instruction 
and deUght, composed these Memoirs of the Cats of 
Greta Hall : to the end that the memory of such 
worthy animals may not perish, but be held in de- 
served honour by my children, and those who shall 
come after them. And let me not be supposed un- 
mindful of Beelzebub of Bath, and Senhor Thomaz 
de Lisboa, that I have not gone back to an earlier 
period, and included them in my design. Far be it 
from me to intend any injury or disrespect to their 
shades ! Opportunity of doing justice to their vir- 
tues will not be wanting at some future time, but 
for the present I must confine myself within the 
limits of these precincts. 

In the autumn of the year 1803, when I entered 
upon this place of abode, I found the hearth in pos- 
session of two cats, whom my nephew Hartley Col- 
eridge, (then in the 7th year of his age,) had named 
Lord Nelson and Bona Marietta. The former, as 
the name imphes, was of the worthier gender : it is 
as decidedly so in Cats, as in grammar and in law. 
He was an ugly specimen of the streaked-carrotty, 



THE DOCTOR 31 1 

or Judas-coloured kind ; which is one of the ugHest 
varieties. But nimium ne crede colori. In spite of 
his complection, there was nothing treacherous about 
him. He was altogether a good Cat, affectionate, 
vigilant, and brave ; and for services performed 
against the Rats was deservedly raised in succession 
to the rank of Baron, Viscount, and Earl. He lived 
to a good old age ; and then being quite helpless 
and miserable, was in mercy thrown into the river. 
I had more than once interfered to save him from 
this fate ; but it became at length plainly an act of 
compassion to consent to it. And here let me ob- 
serve that in a world wherein death is necessary, the 
law of nature by which one creature preys upon 
another is a law of mercy, not only because death is 
thus made instrumental to Ufe, and more life exists 
in consequence, but also because it is better for the 
creatures themselves to be cut off suddenly, than to 
perish by disease or hunger, — for these are the only 
alternatives. 

There are still some of Lord Nelson's descendants 
in the town of Keswick. Two of the family were 
handsomer than I should have supposed any Cats of 
this complection could have been ; but their fur was 
fine, the colour a rich carrot, and the striping like 
that of the finest tyger or tabby kind. I named one of 
them William Rufus ; the other Danayn le Roux, after 
a personage in the Romance of Gyron le Courtoys. 

Bona Marietta was the mother of Bona Fidelia, 
so named by my nephew aforesaid. Bona Fidelia 
was a tortoise-shell cat. She was fihated upon Lord 
Nelson, others of the same litter having borne the 
unequivocal stamp of his likeness. It was in her good 
qualities that she resembled him, for in truth her 
name rightly bespoke her nature. She approached 



312 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

as nearly as possible in disposition to the ideal of a 
perfect cat : — he who supposes that animals have 
not their difference of disposition as well as men, 
knows very little of animal nature. Having survived 
her daughter Madame Catalani, she died of extreme 
old age, universally esteemed and regretted by all 
who had the pleasure of her acquaintance. 

Bona Fidelia left a daughter and a granddaughter ; 
the former I called Madame Bianchi — the latter 
Pulcheria. It was impossible ever to familiarize 
Madame Bianchi, though she had been bred up in 
all respects like her gentle mother, in the same place, 
and with the same persons. The nonsense of that 
arch-philosophist Helvetius would be sufficiently 
confuted by this single example, if such rank folly, 
contradicted as it is by the experience of every family, 
needed confutation. She was a beautiful and sin- 
gular creature, white, with a fijie tabby tail, and two 
or three spots of tabby, always delicately clean ; and 
her wild eyes were bright and green as the Duchess 
de Cadaval's emerald necklace. Pulcheria did not 
correspond, as she grew up, to the promise of her 
kittenhood and her name; but she was as fond as 
her mother was shy and intractable. Their fate was 
extraordinary as well as mournful. When good old 
Mrs. Wilson died, who used to feed and indulge them, 
they immediately forsook the house, nor could they 
be allured to enter it again, though they continued 
to wander and moan around it, and came for food. 
After some weeks Madame Bianchi disappeared, and 
Pulcheria soon afterwards died of a disease endemic 
at that time among cats. 

For a considerable time afterwards, an evil fortune 
attended all our attempts at reestabhshing a Cattery. 
Ovid disappeared and Virgil died of some miserable 



THE DOCTOR 313 

distemper. You and your cousin are answerable for 
these names : the reasons which I could find for 
them were, in the former case, the satisfactory one 
that the said Ovid might be presumed to be a master 
in the Art of Love ; and in the latter, the probable 
one that something Hke Ma-ro might be detected 
in the said Virgil's notes of courtship. There was 
poor Othello : most properly named, for black he 
was, and jealous undoubtedly he would have been, 
but he in his kittenship followed Miss Wilbraham 
into the street, and there in all likelihood came to 
an untimely end. There was the Zombi — (I leave 
the Commentators to explain that title, and refer 
them to my History of Brazil to do it,) — his mar- 
vellous story was recorded in a letter to Bedford, — 
and after that adventure he vanished. There was 
Prester John, who turned out not to be of John's 
gender, and therefore had the name altered to Pope 
Joan. The Pope I am afraid came to a death of 
which other Popes have died. I suspect that some 
poison which the rats had turned out of their holes 
proved fatal to their enemy. For some time I feared 
we were at the end of our Cat-a-logue : but at last 
Fortune, as if to make amends for her late severity, 
sent us two at once, — the-never-to-be-enough- 
praised Rumpelstilzchen, and the equally-to-be- 
admired Hurlyburlybuss. 

And "first for the first of these" as my huge fa- 
vourite, and almost namesake, Robert South, says in 
his Sermons. 

When the Midgeleys went away from the next 
house, they left this creature to our hospitality, cats 
being the least moveable of all animals because of their 
strong local predilections ; — they are indeed in a 
domesticated state the serfs of the animal creation, 



314 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

and properly attached to the soil. The change was 
gradually and therefore easily brought about, for he 
was already acquainted with the children and with 
me ; and having the same precincts to prowl in was 
hardly sensible of any other difference in his con- 
dition than that of obtaining a name ; for when he 
was consigned to us he was an anonymous cat ; and 
I having just related at breakfast, with universal 
applause, the story of Rumpelstilzchen from a Ger- 
man tale in Grimm's Collection, gave him that 
strange and magnisonant appellation ; to which, 
upon its being ascertained that he came when a kitten 
from a baihff's house, I added the patronymic of 
Macbum. Such is his history; his character may 
with most propriety be introduced after the manner 
of Plutarch's parallels, when I shall have given 
some previous account of his great compeer and rival 
Hurlyburlybuss — that name also is of Germanic 
and Grimmish extraction. 

Whence Hurlyburlybuss came was a mystery 
when you departed from the Land of Lakes, and a 
mystery it long remained. He appeared here, as 
Mango Capac did in Peru, and Quetzalcohuatl among 
the Aztecas, no one knew from whence. He made 
himself acquainted with all the philofelists of the 
family — attaching himself more particularly to 
Mrs. Lovell, but he never attempted to enter the 
house, frequently disappeared for days, and once, 
since my return, for so long a time that he was actually 
believed to be dead, and veritably lamented as such. 
The wonder was whither did he return at such times 
— and to whom did he belong ; for neither I in my 
daily walks, nor the children, nor any of the servants, 
ever by any chance saw him anywhere except in our 
own domain. There was something so mysterious 



THE DOCTOR 315 

in this, that in old times it might have excited strong 
suspicion, and he would have been in danger of pass- 
ing for a Witch in disguise, or a familiar. The 
mystery, however, was solved about four weeks 
ago, when, as we were returning from a walk up the 
Greta, Isabel saw him on his transit across the road 
and the wall from Shulicrow, in a direction toward 
the Hill. But to this day we are ignorant who has 
the honour to be his owner in the eye of the law; 
and the owner is equally ignorant of the high favour 
in which Hurlyburlybuss is held, of the heroic name 
which he has obtained, and that his fame has ex- 
tended far and wide — even unto Norwich in the 
East, and Escott and Crediton and Kellerton in the 
West, yea — that with Rumpelstilzchen he has been 
celebrated in song, by some hitherto undiscovered 
poet, and that his glory will go down to future gen- 
erations. 

The strong enmity which unhappily subsists be- 
tween these otherwise gentle and most amiable cats 
is not unknown to you. Let it be imputed, as in 
justice it ought, not to their individual characters, 
(for Cats have characters, — and for the benefit of 
philosophy, as well as felisophy, this truth ought 
generally to be known,) but to the constitution of 
Cat nature, — an original sin, or an original neces- 
sity, which may be only another mode of expressing 
the same thing : 

Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere, 
Nor can one purlieu brook a double reign 
Of Hurlyburlybuss and Rumpelstilzchen. 

When you left us, the result of many a fierce conflict 
was, that Hurly remained master of the green and 
garden, and the whole of the out of door premises; 



3l6 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

Rumpel always upon the appearance of his victorious 
enemy retiring into the house as a citadel or sanc- 
tuary. The conqueror was perhaps in part indebted 
for this superiority to his hardier habits of Ufe, Hving 
always in the open air, and providing for himself; 
while Rumpel, (who though born under a bum- 
baiUff's roof was nevertheless kittened with a silver 
spoon in his mouth,) passed his hours in luxurious 
repose beside the fire, and looked for his meals as 
punctually as any two-legged member of the family. 
Yet I believe that the advantage on Hurly's side is 
in a great degree constitutional also, and that his 
superior courage arises from a confidence in his supe- 
rior strength, which, as you well know, is visible in his 
make. What Bento and Maria Rosa used to say of 
my poor Thomaz, that he was muito fidalgo, is true of 
Rumpelstilzchen, his countenance, deportment, and 
behaviour being such that he is truly a gentleman- 
like Tom-cat. Far be it from me to praise him 
beyond his deserts, — he is not beautiful, the 
mixture, tabby and white, is not good, (except under 
very favourable combinations,) and the tabby is not 
good of its kind. Nevertheless he is a fine cat, 
handsome enough for his sex, large, well-made, with 
good features, and an intelligent countenance, and 
carrying a splendid tail, which in Cats and Dogs is 
undoubtedly the seat of honour. His eyes, which 
are soft and expressive, are of a hue between chryso- 
lite and emerald. Hurlyburlybuss's are between 
chrysolite and topaz. Which may be the more 
esteemed shade for the olho de gato I am not lapidary 
enough to decide. You should ask my Uncle. But 
both are of the finest water. In all his other features 
Hurly must yield the palm, and in form also ; he has 
no pretensions to elegance, his size is ordinary and 



THE DOCTOR 317 

his figure bad : but the character of his face and neck 
is so masculine, that the Chinese, who use the word 
bull as synonymous with male, and call a boy a bull- 
child, might with great propriety denominate him a 
bull-cat. His make evinces such decided marks of 
strength and courage, that if cat-fighting were as 
fashionable as cock-fighting, no Cat would stand a 
fairer chance for winning a Welsh main. He would 
become as famous as the Dog Billy himself, whom 
I look upon as the most distinguished character that 
has appeared since Buonaparte. 

Some weeks ago Hurlyburlybuss was manifestly 
emaciated and enfeebled by ill health, and Rumpel- 
stilzchen with great magnanimity m-ade overtures of 
peace. The whole progress of the treaty was seen 
from the parlour window. The caution with which 
Rumpel made his advances, the sullen dignity with 
which they were received, their mutual uneasiness 
when Rumpel, after a slow and wary approach, 
seated himself whisker-to-whisker with his rival, the 
mutual fear which restrained not only teeth and 
claws, but even all tones of defiance, the mutual 
agitation of their tails which, though they did not 
expand with anger, could not be kept still for sus- 
pense, and lastly the manner in which Hurly re- 
treated, like Ajax still keeping his face toward his 
old antagonist, were worthy to have been represented 
by that painter who was called the Rafaelle of Cats. 
The overture I fear was not accepted as generously 
as it was made ; for no sooner had Hurlyburlybuss 
recovered strength than hostilities were recommenced 
with greater violence than ever; Rumpel, who had 
not abused his superiority while he possessed it, had 
acquired mean time a confidence which made him 
keep the field. Dreadful were the combats which 



3l8 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

ensued, as their ears, faces and legs bore witness. 
Rumpel had a wound which went through one of his 
feet. The result has been so far in his favour that 
he no longer seeks to avoid his enemy, and we are 
often compelled to interfere and separate them. Oh 
it is aweful to hear the " dreadful note of preparation " 
with which they prelude their encounters ! — the 
long low growl slowly rises and swells till it becomes 
a high sharp yowl, — and then it is snapped short 
by a sound which seems as if they were spitting fire 
and venom at each other. I could half persuade my- 
self that the word felonious is derived from the feline 
temper as displayed at such times. All means of 
reconciling them and making them understand how 
goodly a thing it is for cats to dwell together in peace, 
and what fools they are to quarrel and tear each 
other, are in vain. The proceedings of the Society 
for the Abohtion of War are not more utterly ineffec- 
tual and hopeless. 

All we can do is to act more impartially than the 
Gods did between Achilles and Hector, and continue 
to treat both with equal regard. 

And thus having brought down these Memoirs of 
the Cats of Greta Hall to the present day, I commit 
the precious memorial to your keeping, and remain 

Most dissipated and light-heeled daughter, 

Your most diligent and light-hearted father, 

Robert Southey. 
Keswick, i8 June, 1824. 



LIFE OF BAYARD 

The Right Joyous and Pleasant History of the Feats, Gests 
and Prowesses of the Chevalier Bayard, the Good Knight without 
Fear and without Reproach. By the Loyal Servant. London. 
1825. 

The Bon Chevalier sans paour is one of the prin- 
cipal characters in the romance of MeHadus, a book 
written in a higher tone of chivalrous feeling than any 
other v^^ork of its class, Gyron le Courtoys alone ex- 
cepted, which is evidently from the same hand. 
He was the father of Sir Dynadan and La Cote male 
tayle, names well known to those who are versed in 
the history of the Round Table. Sans paour this 
Good Knight was, being indeed a perfect example of 
chivalry; but rather through misfortune than any 
fault, there was one occasion on which he did not come 
off sans reproche. It was in allusion to this personage, 
as well known three centuries ago as the most popu- 
lar characters in Sir Walter's novels are at this time, 
that the appellation of Le Chevalier sans peur et 
sans reproche was bestowed upon Bayard. 

That appellation was well deserved. Rich as the 
old history of the French is in good names, (and how 
rich it is, it becomes an Englishman cheerfully to 
acknowledge,) that of Bayard is preeminently the 
best among them. His is a character that requires 
little allowance to be made for the age in which he 
lived, or the circumstances wherein he was placed ; 
and, on the other hand, it is not to any adventitious 

319 



320 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

circumstances that he is indebted for his high and 
durable reputation, but to his genuine worth — not 
to the splendour of his actions, nor the brilliancy 
of his fortune, but to his generosity and his virtue. 
Perhaps no other person who acted so unimportant 
a part in the world ever attained so wide and just a 
renown. It might be a question for academical 
disputation whether this be more consolatory or 
mournful ; consolatory to think that worth alone, 
unaided by success, is held in such high esteem; or 
mournful to reflect that it should owe this estimation 
to its rarity. 

But because the part which he bore in public affairs 
was so entirely that of an individual possessing Uttle 
influence and no authority, though every one has 
heard his name and is acquainted with his character, 
there are few who know anything more of him than 
the fine circumstances of his death. The translator 
of this "right joyous and pleasant history" has there- 
fore performed a useful task in thus bringing forward 
a work which has never before appeared in our lan- 
guage, a work curious in itself, and in its whole tend- 
ency unexceptionably good. Any thing is useful 
at this time which may assist in producing well- 
founded feelings of respect and good will towards 
a nation against which we have had but too much 
cause to cherish the most hostile disposition. And 
while we let pass no opportunity of noting, for the 
infamy which they deserve, the modern soldiers of 
Cesar Borgia's stamp, who are the opprobrium of the 
nation ; it is with pleasure that we see a French cap- 
tain in all respects their opposite, once more brought 
forward as an example of true miHtary virtue, — one 
who took his stand upon the "Broad Stone of Hon- 
our," — a pedestal which never can be overthrown. 



LIFE OF BAYARD 321 

Pierre du Terrail (for such was the ChevaKer's 
name) was born in the Chateau du Bayard in Dau- 
phiny, in the year 1476. His family was connected 
with the best and noblest in that province, where 
the nobles called themselves the Scarlet of Nobility. 
His ancestors for three generations had fallen in war ; 
one at the battle of Poictiers, another at Agincourt ; 
his grandfather, who, for his distinguished courage, 
was called VEpee Terrail, with six mortal wounds, 
besides others; and his father, Aymon Terrail, 
received such hurt in the battle of Spurs (that of 
Guinegaste ^) that he was never able to leave his 
house. He attained, however, the great age of four- 
score, and, according to the Loyal Servant's account, 
resolving, a few days only before his death, to set 
his house in order, called in his four sons, to learn 
from them, in the presence of their mother, what 
manner of Hfe each of them chose to pursue. The 
eldest, in reply to the question, said, that his wish was 
never to leave the house, but to stay and attend upon 
his father till the end of his days. Very well, George, 
replied the old man, since thou lovest the house, 
thou shalt stay here to fight the bears. In justice 
to George it ought to be remarked, that the occupa- 
tion thus assigned to him was neither an unnecessary 
nor an inglorious one ; a mighty hunter was a very 
useful personage in Dauphiny, where the inhabitants 
were sometimes at peace with the Duke of Savoy, 
but always at war with Sir Bruin and Sir Isgram. 
Pierre's turn came next, a lad about thirteen or Httle 
more, with eyes like a hawk and a cheerful counte- 

^ This specification is important, because at the battle before 
Terouanne, in 15 13, which is more commonly known to English 
readers as the Battle of Spurs, Bayard himself was present, and made 
prisoner. 

Y 



322 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

nance ; and he said that the good discourse concern- 
ing the noble men of past times, and those especially 
of his own family which he had heard from his father, 
had taken root in his heart, and therefore he desired 
to follow the profession of arms, as his ancestors had 
done. My child, rephed the old man, weeping for 
joy as he spake, God give thee grace so to do ! Thou 
art Hke thy grandfather both in features and in make, 
and he in his time was one of the best knights in Chris- 
tendom. I will put thee in a way of obtaining thy 
desire. The third chose to be of the same estate as 
his uncle Monseigneur d'Esnay, so called from the 
abbey over which he presided ; and the youngest to 
be Hke his uncle the Bishop of Grenoble. These had 
their desires, the one becoming Abbot of Josaphat 
at Chartres, the other Bishop of Glandeves, in Pro- 
vence. What success George met with in his cam- 
paigns against the bears no historian hath recorded. 

Aymon Terrail dispatched a servant the next 
morning to Grenoble, requesting that his brother-in- 
law the bishop would visit him at Bayard, to confer 
with him upon some family affairs. This prelate 
(Laurent des AUemans was his name) obeyed the 
summons without delay, and arrived the same night 
at the castle. Other friends and kinsmen were as- 
sembled there. Pierre waited upon them at table 
with so good a grace as to obtain the commendation 
of all ; and when dinner was done and grace said, 
the father informed his guests of the choice which 
this his second son had made, and asked their advice 
in the house of what prince or lord he should be 
placed till he were old enough to enter upon the pro- 
fession of arms. One proposed that he should be 
sent to the King of France ; another was for placing 
him in the house of Bourbon : but the bishop said 



LIFE OF BAYARD 323 

there was a close friendship between their family 
and the Duke of Savoy, who reckoned them in the 
number of his good servants, and no doubt would 
gladly receive him as one of his pages. Conformably 
to this advice it was determined that on the morrow 
the bishop should take his nephew to Chamberry 
and present him to the duke. The business of equip- 
ping him was to be performed, and this could not 
have been done more expeditiously in these days with 
all the faciHties that a modern metropohs affords. 
The bishop sent in all speed for his tailor from Gre- 
noble, with orders to bring with him velvet, satin, 
and other necessary materials, including, it may be 
presumed, other sons of the thimble to assist him. 
They worked all night, and after breakfast, which 
was in those times at an early hour, young Bayard 
presented himself in the court, in his new presenta- 
tion suit, mounted on a fine little horse with which 
his uncle had provided him. 

Horsemanship was an accomplishment of great 
importance in the days of chivalry, for the order of 
knighthood was strictly an equestrian order, and the 
word for a knight in most of the European languages 
signifies a horseman. It was therefore a hopeful 
sign when the boy, who had not left school a fort- 
night, kept his seat well in spite of the efforts of his 
horse to throw him, and giving him the rein and the 
spur, brought the spirited animal fairly under com- 
mand. The father asked him if he had not been 
afraid, for the beholders with some reason had feared 
for him. Sir, he replied, I hope with God's help, 
before six years are over, to make either him or some 
other bestir himself in a more dangerous place. Here 
I am among friends ; but then I shall be among the 
enemies of the master whom I shall serve. His 



324 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

mother, who till now had been sitting in one of the 
towers, weeping, called him apart, and enjoined him, 
"as much as a mother can command her child," to 
love and serve God, and never omit the duty of pray- 
ing night and morning ; to be mild, courteous, hum- 
ble, and obHging to all persons, temperate, loyal in 
word and deed, and kind to the widow and the orphan, 
and bountiful to the poor. She then took out of 
her sleeve, (which in those days served the purpose 
of the modern reticule,) a little purse containing six 
crowns in gold, and one in smaller money, which 
she gave him ; and she delivered a httle portmanteau 
with his Knen to one of the bishop's attendants, 
charging him to pray that the servant of the Squire 
under whose care he might be placed would look 
after him a Httle till he grew older, and entrusting him 
with two crowns which were to enforce the request. 

Chamberry was so near the castle of Bayard, that 
the bishop, setting out after breakfast on his way, 
arrived there in the evening, early enough for the 
clergy to come out and meet him. On the morrow 
after mass, he dined with the duke, and the boy 
serving him to drink at table, was noticed as he had 
hoped, and afterwards presented, on his horse, and 
courteously accepted, as a good and fair present, with 
the hope that God would make him a brave man. 
Charles, the fifth duke of Savoy, in whose service 
young Bayard was thus placed, was one of the best 
princes of a good race. A few generations later and 
the Dukes of Savoy were conspicuous for the disre- 
gard of honour which was manifested in their political 
intrigues, and for the ever execrable persecution of 
their Protestant subjects ; but in the earher periods 
of their history, there is, perhaps, no house of equal 
eminence whose annals are stained with fewer crimes. 



LIFE OF BAYARD 325 

Cestui Due Charles Jut un prince autant vaillant, 
preux at magnanime, qui de son temps ayt vescu; 
et qui s'est comporte autant Men en paix et en guerre 
que nut autre de ses voisins. Tellement que encores 
quHlfust belliqueux et de hault courage, si n'ha il point 
desaugmente le tiltre de paix; heur pro pre de ceste 
maison de Savoye: il s^est dit de luy, que Savoye n'en 
ha iamais eu un plus grand, ny plus admirable en 
guerres, ny plus juste et religieux en temps de paix. 
So Paradin describes him in his Cronique de Savoye} 
Some of these virtues he had inherited from his 
father, Duke Ame, who relying upon the efl&ciency of 
alms as good works, used to wait upon the poor whom 
he entertained, and call them his soldiers and gens 
d^armes, on whom he relied as the bulwarks of his 
dominions. An ambassador inquiring one day if he 
kept hounds, the duke repKed, he would let him see a 
fine pack on the morrow ; and showing him then the 
long tables at which the poor who frequented his court 
were seated, he said, voila mes chiens de chasse, avec 
lesquelz j'espere chasser et prendre la gloire de Paradis? 
The duchess, Blanche de Montferrat, then in the 
flower of her youth, was worthy of such a husband, 
being une des plus excellentes dames en prestance, en 
beaute de corps, et des illustres en vertus et bonnes condi- 
tions qui ayt vescu des son temps.^ The bishop, 

^ The Duke Charles was a prince as valiant, stout, and magnani- 
mous as any who lived in his time, and who bore himself as well in 
peace and in war as any of his neighbors. So that though he was 
warlike and of high carriage, yet he did not slight the claim of peace, 
the special felicity of this house of Savoy : — it was said of him that 
Savoy had never had a greater prince, either more admirable in war 
or more just and pious in time of peace. 

2 Here are my dogs of the chase, with whom I hope to hunt and 
capture the glory of Paradise. 

^ One of the most excellent ladies in bearing and beauty, and one 
of the most distinguished in virtues and good qualities who lived in 
that time. 



326 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

therefore, could not have placed his nephew in a bet- 
ter school; and while young Bayard exercised him- 
self in a maimer suited to his age and profession, in 
leaping, wresthng, riding, and throwing the bar, 
his moral nature, as well as his bodily powers, pro- 
cured all the advantage that is to be derived from 
good example. In this respect the change was not 
desirable for him when, some six months afterwards, 
the duke having an interview with Charles the Eighth 
of France, at Lyons, presented him and his horse to 
the king. On this occasion the boy obtained the 
name of Picquet, by which he was for some time 
called, because when he was displaying his horse- 
manship before the king and his company, the pages, 
echoing the king's desire to see him make the horse 
curvet again, called out to him, picguez, picquez! 
Charles put him under the care of the Lord of Ligny, 
who was of the house of Luxemburg : with him he 
continued as page till he was seventeen, and then was 
enrolled in that lord's company, though he was so 
much a favourite that he still kept his appointment 
in the household, with the allowance of three horses 
and three hundred francs a year. 

In this company he came again to Lyons, at the 
time when a Burgundian knight, Claude de Vauldre, 
hung up liis shields, defying, with the king's permis- 
sion, all adventurers, either at spear on horseback, 
or battle-axe on foot. Picquet, by which name he 
was now generally known, stept before the shields 
and looked at them thoughtfully, saying within him- 
self, Ah, good lord ! if I knew how to put myself in 
fitting array, I would right gladly touch them ! Upon 
communicating that wish to his companion Bellabre, 
and expressing his regret that he knew not any one 
who would furnish him with armour and horses, 



LIFE OF BAYARD 327 

Bellabre, who was a fort hardy gentilhomme, said to 
him, have you not an uncle who is the fat abbot of 
Esnay? I vow to God we will go to him, and if he 
will not supply the money, we will lay hands on 
crosier and mitre ; but, I beHeve, that when he knows 
your good intentions, he will produce it willingly. 
Picquet upon this, touched the shields. Monjoye, 
king at arms, who was there in due form, to write 
down the names of all appellants, said to him, how, 
my friend, your beard is not of three years growth, 
and do you undertake to combat with Messire Claude 
de Vauldre, who is one of the fiercest knights known ? 
The youth answered, that he was not influenced by 
pride or arrogance, but by the desire of learning the 
use of arms from those who could teach him, and the 
hope also, that with God's grace, he might do some- 
thing to please the ladies. It was soon the talk of 
the court, that Picquet had touched the shields; 
and as the combat was not to be like one of the des- 
perate adventures in the days of King Arthur or 
King Lisuarte, but such a spectacle as ladies might 
very well behold without any fearful emotion, Charles 
and the Lord of Ligny were well pleased with the 
spirit which their young soldier had manifested. 

They were not aware that Picquet looked with 
more apprehension to his adventure with his uncle 
the abbot, than with his adversary the knight. The 
next morning early he took boat with his friend 
Bellabre for Esnay ; — the news had arrived there 
before them, and the abbot gave his nephew an 
ungracious reception, suspecting at once the purport 
of this visit. He reminded him that he was a page 
the other day, and yet but a boy, and that the rod 
would be the fit punishment for his presumption. 
Picquet pleaded in his justification the desire of emu- 



328 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

lating his ancestors, and preferred his request with 
becoming modesty and spirit. Ma foy, replied the 
abbot, you may go elsewhere for money ! the property 
bestowed on this abbey by the founder was to be 
expended here for the service of God, and not in 
jousts and tourneys. Perhaps Picquet thought, 
when he glanced at the abbot's well fed form, that 
the revenues were not all applied to religious uses. 
Bellabre, however, put in a well-timed speech, say- 
ing, that had it not been for the prowess of his ances- 
tors, the abbot would not have possessed the abbey 
of Esnay, for it was by their means and no other 
that he had obtained it. His nephew was of good 
descent, and enjoyed at this time both the Lord of 
Ligny's and the king's favour. It would not cost 
two hundred crowns to equip him, and the honour 
which he would do his uncle would be worth ten 
thousand. The abbot stood out awhile, but yielding 
at length, gave Bellabre an hundred crowns to buy 
two horses for the youth, whose beard, he said, was 
not yet old enough for him to be trusted with money, 
and he gave him a written order to Laurencin, a 
merchant in Lyons, to furnish him with such apparel 
as he might want. If the abbot's bounty was not 
graciously bestowed, neither was it gratefully re- 
ceived. They had no sooner left him, than Bellabre 
said, where God sends good fortune men ought to 
make the best use of it; Ce qu'on desrobe a moynes 
est pain heneist : ' and in pursuance of that proverb 
he proposed, that as the order upon Laurencin speci- 
fied no limits, they should make haste, before the 
uncle should perceive his omission, and send to limit 
him. Picquet agreed to this something too easily; 
and letting Bellabre tell the merchant that the abbot 
^ What you steal from the monks is blessed bread. 



LIFE OF BAYARD 329 

had given him three hundred crowns for horses instead 
of one, and that his instructions were to have him 
fitted out so that no man in the company should be 
better attired than he, obtained from him gold and 
silver stuffs, embroidered satins, velvets, and other 
silks, to the amount of eight hundred crowns, before 
the abbot's messenger, restricting the order to an 
hundred or an hundred and twenty, arrived. Dis- 
pleased at this, as he well might be, the abbot sent 
to inform him that if he did not send back the goods 
which he had thus improperly obtained, he should 
never receive any farther assistance from him ; but 
Picquet, expecting such a message, kept out of the 
way, and would never suffer any of his uncle's people 
to be admitted. The chivalrous ages gave large license 
in such matters, as well as in certain other things. 
The Loyal Serviteur relates this story as if it left his 
youthful hero sans reproche; just as the way in which 
the Cid defrauded the Jews at Burgos is recorded by 
his Chronicler and his poets as if they did not per- 
ceive the slightest dishonour in an action for which 
a man would now be punished by the laws of every 
country in Europe, or be rendered infamous even if 
he escaped them. 

In Bayard's case what there was worse than mere 
youthful facility may be imputed to his companion. 
Happily his nature was originally so good, and per- 
haps his early education also, that he escaped with 
little corruption from the evil communication to 
which he was exposed. The military part of the 
adventure past off well. He bought two good horses 
for an hundred and ten crowns, and in the lists, it 
appears from the honest account of the Loyal Ser- 
vant, that Claude de Vauldre behaved as a knight 
of established character might have been expected 



330 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

to do, towards a youth in his eighteenth year : "how 
it happened I cannot tell, ou si Dieu luy en vouloit 
donner louange, ou si M. Claude de Vauldre preint 
plaisir avec luy^ but so it was, that no one in the whole 
combat, on horseback or on foot, played his part 
better or as well." The ladies gave him the honour 
of the day, when in his turn he paraded the lists before 
them : the Lord of Ligny and the king praised him 
for the good beginning he had made, and the trick 
which had been played upon the abbot of Esnay 
served as a jest for the court. 

After this adventure Picquet was sent by the 
Lord of Ligny to join his company at Aire, in Picardy ; 
upon taking leave of the king, Charles told him he 
was going into a land where there were fair ladies, 
bade him exert himself to win their favour, and 
presented him with three hundred crowns and one 
of the best horses in his stables. The Lord of Ligny 
also gave him a good horse and two complete suits, 
and Bayard, who gave as liberally to those in inferior 
stations as he received from his patrons, set off for 
Picardy by short journeys, because he had his horses 
led. Some six-and-twenty of his comrades, know- 
ing his approach, rode out to meet him ; a supper 
had been provided for his arrival, and before they 
separated, his companions, concluding that he had 
not come to keep garrison without money, made him 
promise to give a tourney, that he might himself 
talk to and win the good will of the ladies. The 
next morning, accordingly, it was announced, that 
"Pierre de Bayard, jeune gentilhomme et apprentif 
des armes, des ordonnances du Roy de France, caused 
a tourney to be cried and pubhshed for all comers, 

^Whether God wished to give him the glory or M. Claude de 
Vauldre took a liking to him. 



LIFE OF BAYARD 331 

without the town of Lyons and adjoining the walls, 
of three strokes of the lance without lists, and twelve 
of the sword with edged weapons, and in harness of 
war, the whole on horseback ; and to them who did 
best, a golden bracelet should be given, weighing 
thirty crowns, and enamelled with his device." The 
next day there was to be a combat at point of lance 
on foot, and at a barrier half stature high, and after 
the lance was broken, with battle-axes, at the dis- 
cretion of the judges, the prize being a diamond of 
forty crowns value. 

Par Dieu, compaignon, said his adviser, when the 
ordonnance for the tourney was shown him, jamais 
Lancelot, Tristan, ne Gauvain ne feirent mieulx} A 
trumpet was sent from garrison to garrison to pro- 
claim it; six-and-forty adventurers appeared to 
contend for the prizes, and Bayard, having been 
pronounced himself to have done best on both days, 
without disparagement of others, who had all done 
well, gave the bracelet to his friend Bellabre, and the 
diamond to Captain David, the Scot. Thenceforth 
the ladies could not be satisfied with praising the good 
knight. This tourney gave occasion to many others 
during the two years that he remained in Picardy; 
and tourneys were popular entertainments, for a 
reason which one of the best writers of romance ex- 
presses with considerable naivete when he is de- 
scribing one. "A celluy temps la coustume estoit 
merveilleusement mise sus, que la on les tournoyemens 
devoient estre, les dames et les damoiselles dillec entour, 
et de deux journees de loing y venoient; je dy des dames 
qui estoient de noble lignage; les chevaliers qui estoient 
leurs parens charnelz les amenoient illec, et moult 
de dames et damoiselles estoient ja illec venues. La 
^ Never did Lancelot, Tristan, nor Gawain perform better. 



332 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

estoient maries moult honnorablement et moult haulte- 
mente qui ja neussent este maries de long temps, se ne 
fust ce guelles estoient illec venues. — Les dames et 
damoiselles quon y amenoit, y Jaisoit on plus venir pour 
les marier que pour nulle autre chose." ^ The "moral" 
Gower tells us in his Confessio Amantis, that he 
who sought "Love's grace" from such "worthy wo- 
men" as the Romancer speaks of, must travel for 
worship by land and by sea — 

"And make many hastie rodes, 
Sometime in Pruis, sometyme in Rodes, 
And sometime into Tartaric ; 
So that these herauldes on him crie, 
Vaylant, vaylant ! lo where he goth ! 
And then he yeveth hem gold and doth, 
So that his fame might sprynge 
And to his Ladies ear brynge 
Some tidynge of his worthinesse. 
So that she might of his prowesse 
Of that she herde men recorde 
The better unto his love accorde." 

But it was not necessary to go crusading to Prussia 
or Rhodes, for the purpose of winning a fair lady's 
love, in the days of chivalry. In those days the 
civilians were, with few exceptions, clergy, and bound 
to celibacy therefore. — Of that obligation, connected 
as it then was with the durance and restrictions of 
the cloisters, the women of gentle birth lived in fear. 

^ At this time the custom was remarkably in vogue, that wherever 
tornaments were to take place the ladies and damsels from the sur- 
rounding country would assemble there, even from as far as two days' 
journey ; I mean ladies who were of noble lineage ; the knights who 
were their blood-kin escorted them thither, and many ladies and 
damsels were already gathered there. Many were there married 
very honorably and very worthily who might not have been married 
for a long time if they had not come to this place. — The ladies and 
damsels were brought there more to be married than for any other 
reason. Meliadus, c. 52. ff. 82. 



LIFE OF BAYARD 333 

''Ah poor wretches, what will become of us ! we must 
enter into religion and be made nuns by will or by 
force!" is the exclamation which a writer of those 
times puts into the mouths of the Spanish ladies, at 
the prospect of a civil war : — Ay mezquinas y que 
sera de nosotras, que or a por fuerga, or a por grado, 
avremos de entrar en religion y ser de orden ! A tourna- 
ment was the only public amusement, except what a 
Saint's day afforded, in an age when there were neither 
theatres, music-meetings, nor races ; when the assizes 
were connected with no festivities, and the capital 
was not frequented by persons from the provinces, 
and there were no watering-places for fashionable 
resort. 

The mimicry of war, with all its pomp and circum- 
stance and splendid pageantry, could not be more 
gratifying to the most light-hearted of the one sex, 
than the reality of it was to the adventurous or the 
desperate part of the other. These gallants had their 
full occupation when they were withdrawn from 
their pleasant quarters in Picardy, to bear a part in 
what Paradin calls the immortal quarrel between 
the Angevins and the Arragonese, in the kingdoms of 
Sicily and Naples, a quarrel in which, says the good 
canon of Beaujeu, so much human blood had been 
shed, that if it could be seen together, it would seem 
like a sea. . . } 

The first act of Louis XII. was to enforce his heredi- 
tary claims upon the duchy of Milan, which he con- 
quered with little difficulty. Bayard was among 
the persons who were left in Lombardy to garrison 
it. Sforza had fled into Germany to solicit aid ; and 
the French, having no enemy to employ them, took 
their pleasure in jousts, tourneys and other pastimes. 

^ Southey here introduces a long digression on Italian politics. 



334 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

Bayard profited by this leisure to visit the widow of 
his first good master, the Lady Blanch, who resided 
then in Carignan, a town belonging to her own 
dowry. There was no house, at that time, of Prince 
or Princess in France, Italy, or elsewhere, where gentle- 
men were better entertained, than in her establish- 
ment. Bayard was welcomed there as if he had been 
a kinsman. Perhaps respect and gratitude were 
not the only feelings which induced him to make 
this visit. A young lady of the household had won 
his heart, when he was page to the duke, young as 
he then was; the attachment had been mutual; 
and had he been the eldest son, it is probable that 
he would have forsaken the path of glory for that of 
happiness, and have settled at the Chateau de Bay- 
ard, contented that his name should appear only in 
the family tree. Their early separation proved so 
effectual, that though during three or four years they 
kept up such intercourse by letters as was practicable 
in those times, the lady accepted an advantageous 
offer, and married the Seigneur de Fluxas, a person 
of great wealth, who took her pour sa bonne grace, 
for she had few of the goods of fortune. 

''Desiring, as a virtuous woman might, to let the 
good knight see that the honourable love which she 
had borne him in her youth, still lasted," she advised 
him to hold a tourney at Carignan, in honour of the 
Lady Blanch and of the house in which he had been 
first brought up. "Verily," said the Good Knight, 
"since you wish it, it shall be done. You are the 
woman in the world who first won my heart to her 
service, by means of your bonne grace. I am sure I 
shall never have any thing of you but your lips and 
hands, for by asking more I should lose my labour, 
and on my soul I had rather die than press you with a 



LIFE OF BAYARD 335 

dishonourable suit." He then asked for one of her 
sleeves, and presently sent a trumpet round to the 
neighbouring garrisons proclaiming a prize, consist- 
ing of the sleeve with a ruby worth an hundred 
ducats, to him who should perform best at three 
strokes of the spear and twelve of the sword. As at 
Lyons so here also he was pronounced the winner, 
but he declared that if he had done any thing well, 
the Dame of Fluxas was the occasion of it, who had 
lent him her sleeve, and to her he referred the dis- 
posal of the prize. Her husband understood both 
her character and that of Bayard too well to enter- 
tain any jealous feeling ; and she therefore promised 
to preserve the sleeve for his sake, as long as she lived, 
and adjudged the jewel to the knight who was thought 
to have done best after him. The Loyal Servant 
adds, that no year past in which there was not some 
interchange of presents between his master and the 
lady, and that this mutual affection lasted between 
them till death. 

Bayard was soon engaged in a more perilous adven- 
ture. Ludovico Sforza entered Italy with a German 
force, and soon recovered the greater part of his 
duchy, the capital included. The town where the 
Good Knight was in garrison, was but twenty miles 
from Milan, and he led out his companions upon an 
adventure against three hundred of the enemy's 
horse in Binasco. A sharp encounter took place, 
in which the Good Knight is described as cutting off 
heads and hewing arms and legs : the ItaHans at 
length fled full speed to Milan, and Bayard, unsup- 
ported by any of his comrades, madly followed them 
into the very heart of the city, where he was sur- 
rounded and taken before Sforza's palace. The cap- 
tain of the Italians, to whom he surrendered, took him 



336 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

to his own house, treated him like a generous enemy, 
and when Sforza, having heard the uproar, sent to 
have the prisoner brought before him, gave him fitting 
apparel, and went to present him, not without a fear 
that some evil was intended. But even the worst 
men have their better moods ; and Sforza behaved 
on this occasion as nobly as Bayard himself could 
have done, had the situation in which they stood to 
each other been reversed. "Come hither, my gentle- 
man," said Sforza, accosting him, "who brought you 
into this town?" Bayard, in reply, confessed his 
rashness as an inexperienced soldier, and commended 
his fortune in that he had fallen into the hands of a 
brave and gentle knight. Sforza then asked him to 
say upon his faith, what was the number of the French 
king's army. Bayard replied, that there were 14,000 
or 15,000 men at arms, and 16,000 or 18,000 foot, 
all chosen men ; and methinks, my lord, he added, 
you would be as safe in Germany as here, for your 
people are not equal to engage us. However dis- 
couraging this intelligence might have been to the 
duke, he received it with a cheerful countenance, and 
said he wished to see the two armies encounter, that 
it might be decided by the event of battle, to whom 
that territory belonged, as there seemed no other 
means of determining the question. By my oath, 
my lord, exclaimed Bayard, I wish it to-morrow, pro- 
vided I was out of prison ! It shall not stick there, 
was the generous answer, for I set you free ; and more- 
over, ask what you will and it shall be granted. 
Upon this, Bayard made the only becoming request, 
that his horse and arms might be restored, and he 
might be sent back to his garrison, professing, in 
return, that as far as was compatible with the service 
of the king his master, and his own honour, he should 



LIFE OF BAYARD 337 

gladly make acknowledgment in any thing that Sforza 
might be pleased to command. 

There are legends among the humaner fables of the 
Romish church, which represent souls in Purgatory, 
and even beyond it, in the hyper-torrid zone of the 
spiritual world, as enjoying occasional intermissions 
or partial mitigation of their torments, for some prac- 
tice of devotion which amid all their sins they had 
observed, or some good work, even though soHtary 
of its kind, and casually performed, in the course 
of a flagitious life. So may this anecdote, which is 
in the best spirit of chivalry, be remembered in the 
story of Ludovico Sforza. How far does it appear 
from history that that spirit, when it was most preva- 
lent, affected the general usages of war? Probably 
about as much as the spirit of pure and undefiled 
religion affects the morals of any Christian nation; 
that is, upon the mass of mankind it had little effect ; 
over many, a partial influence which was easily 
overpowered by interest or passion ; but some few 
happier natures were entirely conformed to it, and 
thereby enabled to support that constitutional ele- 
vation of mind which predisposed them for chusing 
the better part. In the best age of chivalry, that 
of Edward III., its influence was very Hmited ; we 
read of actions which make the heart glow with gen- 
erous emotions, but they are accompanied with de- 
tails of the most inhuman ferocity, and even the prime 
spirits of that age resented often and deeply of its 
barbarity. The change which had been operated in 
Bayard's time was not for the better. There was 
no room for chivalry in the general business of war, 
after the introduction of fire-arms, the employment 
of mercenaries, and that consequent alteration which 
made the strength of armies consist mainly in their 



338 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

foot. Still, however, it had its place in the episodes. 
In the succeeding generation it was confined to tourna- 
ments ; lastly, it appeared only in pageants, and 
these fell into disuse when its very costume became 
obsolete ; court-gallants laid aside the helmet and 
the cap and plumes for the flowing periwig ; the trade 
of the armourer disappeared, and the army-tailor 
supplied his place. 

With the right or wrong of the cause wherein they 
were engaged, the good knights gave themselves 
no concern. That belonged to their rulers : for 
themselves, war was their profession and pursuit ; 
they staked their lives at the game, and if they played 
it honourably, the best of them set their consciences 
at ease upon all other scores. Opportunities, however, 
were not wanting for the display of those virtues 
which characterized Bayard, and which indeed were 
called into action and seen to most advantage in such 
times. The Loyal Servant calls him Lady Courtesy's 
adopted son, and such he seems to have proved him- 
self on every occasion whether to friend or foe. Dur- 
ing the Neapolitan war he took prisoner Don Alonzo de 
Sotomayor, who is said in these Memoirs to have been 
closely related to Gonzalo de Cordova ; the Spaniard 
was captured in a skirmish after a brave resistance, 
and agreed to pay a thousand crowns for his ransom. 
He thought proper, however, to break his parole : 
being pursued and brought back, he protested that 
he had been actuated only by impatience at not hear- 
ing from his own people, intending to have sent the 
sum agreed upon for his ransom within two days, if 
he had succeeded in escaping. Bayard did not believe 
this, and ordered him into close confinement ; in 
that con^nement he was well treated, and in little 
more than a fortnight the money arrived, and he was 



LIFE OF BAYARD 339 

set at liberty. The Good Knight, as usual, distrib- 
uted the whole ransom among his soldiers, retaining 
no part for himself. This was done in Sotomayor's 
presence, and that knight on his return spoke in the 
highest terms of Bayard's liberality, activity, and 
other knightly qualities, but complained of his own 
usage, saying, that whether it were by his order or 
not, he knew not, but his people had not treated him 
like a gentleman, and it would stick with him as long 
as he lived. A Frenchman, who was at that time 
a prisoner, heard this, and reported it, on his deliver- 
ance, to Bayard, in such a manner, that a challenge 
ensued, which Sotomayor accepted. The circum- 
stances might probably appear very different were 
there a Spanish account of the story; as it is now 
related it represents a series of dishonourable dealings 
on the Spaniard's side, who chose to fight on foot, 
not merely because Bayard was the better horseman, 
but because, knowing that he had at that time an 
ague, he thought his strength must be so far reduced 
that he could not venture to combat in that way. 
Sotomayor, however, was killed on the spot, by a 
thrust in the throat. 

This adventure wounded the Spaniards, and led, 
during a truce which at this time ensued, to the pro- 
posal on their part, of a combat, thirteen to thirteen. 
The conditions were, that the place should be marked 
out, and whosoever past beyond the limits, was to 
fight no more, but remain a prisoner ; whoever 
should be unhorsed also, was to combat no longer. 
And in case one party were not able to conquer the 
other by nightfall, though only one of their adver- 
saries remained on horseback, the combat was then 
to be at an end, and that one allowed to carry off 
his companions "free and clear, who were to leave 



340 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

the field in equal honour with the rest." But if the 
field were won, the conquered party were to be the 
prisoners of the other. The Loyal Servant repre- 
sents the Spaniards as behaving with little fairness 
and less honour on this occasion, and killing eleven 
horses in the first encounter. But, in encounters of 
this kind the danger must obviously have been greater 
to horse than man. Pietro Martire speaks of a tour- 
nament at Valladolid in which seven horses were 
killed on the spot, not by any sinister dealing, but 
in the fair chance of the lists. Bayard and the Lord 
of Orosi were the only Frenchmen who remained on 
horseback, and maintained their ground the whole 
day, assaulting the enemy when they saw their advan- 
tage, and retiring when they were threatened them- 
selves, behind the dead horses of their comrades 
as a rampart ; so that when the day closed, though 
neither party could claim the victory, the honour 
remained to the French, two of whom had battled 
during four hours against thirteen without being 
overcome. . . . 

The practice of ransoming prisoners, which seems 
to have gradually superseded that of selling them into 
slavery, was, in itself, an arrangement of mercy, but 
often abused in the most inhuman manner, the cap- 
tives being treated with the utmost rigour, and some- 
times tortured, till they raised for their deliverance 
larger sums than by the proper usages of war ought 
to have been required. It seems to have been dis- 
used as gradually as it was introduced ; the latest 
instance which occurs to us is as late as the year 
1725, and a disgraceful one of its kind it is. When 
the French that year plundered the village of Zwam- 
merdam, in Holland, they carried off a girl of six years 
old, and as she was evidently of good extraction, 



LIFE OF BAYARD 34 1 

she was sold from one to another as a marketable 
commodity, and purchased at last at Utrecht for 
six hundred guelder s, by a person who became so fond 
of her as very unwillingly to resign her to her father 
when she was discovered, upon repayment of that 
sum. Were such things tolerated, war would be 
more frightful than it is. In Bayard's age the adven- 
turer looked to making prisoners as the best chance 
in the lottery of a mihtary life. How Bayard him- 
self, who gave up with characteristic bounty all such 
prizes of this kind as fortune threw in his way, was 
enabled to support the appearance which he made, 
and the liberal expenditure in which he indulged, is 
not explained by his biographer. We hear of the 
presents which he received from the king, or his 
immediate commander ; but he is always represented 
as giving as largely as he received, and these, even if 
he had kept them wholly to himself, could not have 
suflbiced. Resources, however, he must have had, 
and ample ones. Perhaps the abbot of Esnay had 
forgiven him, and become proud of a nephew who was 
doing honour to the family; perhaps the Bishop 
of Grenoble assisted him. All that appears in his 
memoirs is that at all times he wanted money as 
little as he cared for it. 

This disposition was shown with circumstances of 
peculiar generosity when he intercepted a money- 
changer and his man, each with a great pouch full 
of money behind him, on their way to Gonzalo de 
Cordova, with an escort of horse. The prize con- 
sisted of 15,000 ducats. The law of distribution in 
such cases seems not to have been clearly understood : 
there were two roads which the money-changer might 
have taken : Bayard occupied the one by which he 
happened to come, and sent a certain Tardieu of his 



342 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

company to occupy the other ; and when Tardieu 
claimed his share as having been of the undertaking 
{de Ventreprinse) Bayard, with a smile, denied his 
claim, as he had not been at the taking {de la prinse). 
Tardieu grew warm, and complained to the com- 
mander ; the opinions of all the captains were taken, 
and the decision, contrary to what might have been 
expected, was, that Tardieu had no right to share. 
This officer, who was as light in heart as in pocket, 
bore the decision with good humour, and swearing 
by the blood of St. George that he was an unlucky 
fellow, said merrily to the Good Knight, Pardieu, 
it's all one, for you will have to maintain me as long 
as we tarry in this land. Bayard displayed the duc- 
ats before Tardieu, and asked him if they were not 
pretty things. The Loyal Servant wrongs him on 
this occasion by ascribing to him the unworthy mo- 
tive of wishing to mortify his comrade, whereas it 
was evident that no such thought could have been 
entertained by him at the moment ; for upon Tar- 
dieu's reply, that half that sum would make him rich 
for life. Bayard immediately gave him half. The 
astonished officer fell upon his knees, and with tears 
of joy exclaimed. My master, and my friend, what 
return can I ever make ! This bounty, it is added, 
was well bestowed. Tardieu did not squander the 
large sum of which he became thus possessed, and in 
consequence was enabled on his return to France 
to obtain an heiress for wife, with 3,000 livres a year. 
The other half the Good Knight, "with heart as pure 
as a pearl," distributed among all the soldiers of his 
garrison, to each according to his quality, without 
reserving a single denier for himself ; and he set 
the money-changer and his servant free without 
requiring any ransom, and without taking from him 



LIFE OF BAYARD $43 

rings and money to the amount of some 500 ducats 
more, which he had about his person. 

When Lewis undertook the expedition to Genoa, 
to reheve his party in that city, who in the profane 
language of Jean Marot were attendant le Messias de 
France, Bayard was one of the king's equerries, hold- 
ing that appointment till some company of gendarmes 
should be vacant. At that time he was suffering 
under the same ague which was upon him when he 
performed the combat with Sotomayor, and which 
continued upon him seven years; he had also an 
ulcer in the arm, in consequence of a blow from a pike 
which had been ill-treated. In those days, when men 
recovered from diseases or wounds, it was by the 
remedial power of nature, not by the skill of the 
physicians or surgeons. Though, however, in such 
ill condition for service, he thought it dishonourable 
to remain at Lyons when the king was in the field, 
crost the mountains with him, and distinguished 
himself in the campaign. 

The League of Cambray followed, and the expedi- 
tion against the Venetians. On this occasion the 
king gave him a company, but told him that his lieu- 
tenant must lead his gendarmes, for he wished him 
to have the charge of the infantry. Bayard asked 
what number of foot he was to command, and the 
king said, a thousand; no man had more. Sire, 
replied the Good Knight, they are too many for my 
skill ; I beseech you let me have but five hundred, 
and I will take care to chuse such as shall do you 
service. Even this, methinks, is a heavy charge 
for one that would do his duty. He is mentioned in 
Jean Marot's Voyage de Venise as commanding this 
number, but he is only mentioned in the three words 
which comprize his name, and the amount of his 



344 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

company ; — had it suited the verse we might have 
been informed what was the character of his people, 
— it is to be hoped, for Bayard's sake, that they were 
better than those with whom the poet has classed 
them, some of whom he describes to be gentle as 
cats, humane as leopards, honest as millers, having 
fingers as adhesive as glue, and being innocent as 
Judas Iscariot. . . . 

The Good Knight appears next at the siege of 
Padua, after it had been recovered by a successful 
stratagem of the Venetians. . . . Before the be- 
siegers could take up their ground there were four 
barricades to be won upon the Vicenza road, two 
hundred paces from one another, and which, on ac- 
count of the ditches on each side the road, could 
only be attacked in front. The charge of winning 
them was entrusted to Bayard. He got possession 
of the first, the enemy falling back upon the second. 
*'If there was good fighting at the first barrier, at 
this there was still better." A body of peasants 
were brought up who had been trained as pioneers, 
and after a good half-hour's assault this was carried 
also, and the defendants were pursued so closely 
and with such effect, that instead of making a stand 
at the third barrier, they betook themselves at once 
to the last. This was defended by i,ooo or 1,200 men, 
with three or four falconets, and it was but a stone's 
throw from the city bulwarks. There they made a 
resolute stand, and the conflict continued for about 
an hour, with pikes and arquebusses. The Good 
Knight grew impatient, and said to his companions. 
Sirs, these people detain us too long, let us ahght and 
press forward to the barrier! Some thirty or forty 
gendarmes immediately dismounted, and raising their 
visors and couching their lances pushed on to the 



LIFE OF BAYARD 345 

barricado. The Prince of Anhalt was one of this 
brave party, and Great John of Picardy was another, 
a person in name and stature, and probably enough 
in his propensities, like Little John of Sherwood, 
though not of equal celebrity, because he had no 
ballad writer who should 

"him immortal make 
With verses dipt in dew of Castaly" — 

all that is known of Great John being this incidental 
mention of his name by the Loyal Servant. These 
brave companions faisoient raige. But the defend- 
ants were continually reinforced by fresh men from 
the city ; and Bayard, seeing this, exclaimed, they 
will keep us here these six years at this rate, sound, 
trumpet ! and every one follow me ! Then like a 
Hon robbed of his whelps — (for it is of a lion-father 
that the chronicler speaks) — he led on so fierce an 
assault, that the Venetians retired a pike's length 
from the barricade. On, comrades, he cried, they are 
ours ! and, leaping the barricade, was gallantly fol- 
lowed, and not less perilously received ; but the sight 
of his danger excited the French, and he was speedily 
supported in such strength, that he remained master 
of the ground. "Thus were the barricades before 
Padua won at mid-day, whereby the French, horse 
as well as foot, acquired great honour, above all the 
Good Knight, to whom the glory was universally 
ascribed." . . . 

During the siege, and indeed whenever opportuni- 
ties could be found or made, Bayard distinguished 
himself by many perilous enterprizes, in which he 
was beholden sometimes for success and sometimes 
for deliverance or escape, as much to his own personal 
prowess and the strong attachment of his comrades, 



346 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

as to his well-concerted plans. As a soldier indeed 
the Good Knight was better fitted for the time of 
Du Guesclin and the Black Prince, than for the age 
of Italian politicians and Swiss mercenaries. His 
mind in this respect was retrospective rather than 
anticipant. Congenial as the spirit of chivalry was 
to his natural disposition, it had been fostered in 
him by education and family pride of the best and 
worthiest kind ; and he regarded sorrowfully that 
change in the system of war which the use of fire- 
arms was then rapidly producing, plainly foreseeing 
that the chivalrous character must in consequence 
soon become extinct. The time was fresh in remem- 
brance when the presence of a single knight was felt 
to be of such importance as to give the one side an 
assurance of victory, and impress upon the other a 
forefeeling which prepared them for defeat. The 
prose romancers exaggerate the personal achieve- 
ments of their heroes, even beyond the becoming 
limits of fiction ; but as their machinery had its 
foundation in popular belief, so had this exaggera- 
tion its ground in the chivalrous system of warfare. 
When Jayme, King of Aragon, saw his son embark 
for the conquest of Sardinia, the first charge which 
he gave him was to pronounce these words veneer o 
Morir,^ three times before he entered into battle, and 
then to lead on himself, with that fixed determina- 
tion. The second charge was to see that all his knights 
were ready before he began, and if a single one were 
wanting, to wait for him, "that you may have the 
benefit," says the old king, "of his advice and pres- 
ence, and not be the cause that he receive shame, and 
be without his part of the glory of the victory. Many 
a time the counsel or the prowess of a single knight 
^ To conquer or die. 



LIFE OF BAYARD 347 

hath gained a battle." "Villainous saltpetre" was 
putting an end to this personal importance, and the 
invectives against this invention in the poets only 
express what was the real feeHng of those persons in 
the higher ranks of society, who had any of the nobler 
feelings which were called forth in war. Jean Marot 
complains of its levelling effects, and says that more 
courage was required for soldiers now than in the time 
of Alexander. 

"Car en ses jours n'avoieni point cest oraige 

De feu et pouldre, 
Aux Jons d'enfer inventee pour touldre 
Vie mix humains, plus que tonnerre ou fouldre; 
Cil qti'elle actaint se peult Hen faire absouldre, 

Car s'en est faict. 
Ung Roy, ung Prince, ung Chevalier de faict 
Est aussi-tost qu'unjeune enfant dejfaict. 
Centre son sort peu vault d'armes Vefaict 

Force et valeur; 
Et croy que si Hector fier hatailleur, 
Fort Hercules, Cesar grand debelleur, 
Estoieni vivans, auroient crainte et frayeur 

De teV tempeste." ^ 

The author of the Memoires de Tremoille observes 
that the harquebuss is a weapon which Christians 
ought not to use in their wars with each other, but 
only against infidels ; and Bayard partook this feel- 
ing so strongly, that excellently gentle and humane 
as he was in the whole tenour of his life and actions, 
he would give no quarter to harquebussiers. 

^ For in his days they did not have this storm of fire and powder 
invented in the pit of hell to destroy the life of men more than thunder 
or lightning. He whom it strikes may well get ready for his absolu- 
tion, for he is done. A king, a prince, a knight of prowess is as quickly 
undone as a small child, Httle avails against his fate the effect of arms 
or might or valor. I believe if Hector the fierce warrior, strong 
Hercules, or Caesar the great general were Hving, they would be 
possessed with great fear and terror at such a storm. 



348 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

Bayard, who "never grudged money if he could 
learn what the enemy were doing," was in general 
well served by his spies, because he paid them well. 
And once by their means he laid a scheme for catch- 
ing the Pope, which was so well concerted, that 
his Holiness must inevitably have been taken if he 
had not turned back in consequence of a violent snow- 
storm ; yet the Good Knight was so close upon him, 
that as the Pope was about to enter the castle of Saint 
Felice, he heard the French in the town, and leaping 
out of his litter, at the alarm, helped to raise the 
drawbridge himself, which was wisely done, for "had 
he delayed while one might say a paternoster, he 
would assuredly have been snapped." Such adven- 
tures gave a character of romantic interest to the wars 
of those days, and in such things it was that Bayard 
was chiefly tried. He used to say that a perfect 
knight ought to possess three qualities, the attack 
of a bull-dog, the defence of a wild boar, and the pur- 
suit of a wolf. This speech might have come from 
the Clissons of history, or the Sir Turpins and Sir 
Breuses of romance. But Bayard was a better soldier 
as well as a better man than one who should have 
united in himself all these ferine qualities. Car il 
fault que tous lisans ceste histoire sqaichent que ce hon 
chevalier estoit un may registre des hatailles ; ' and in 
the early part of his career he was not more distin- 
guished for enterprizing valour, than he was in ma- 
turer life for sage counsel. One of his maxims was, 
that he who makes no account of his enemy is a 
madman. 

Pope Julius had a strong desire to be revenged on 
the French, and at a time when Bayard was at Fer- 

^ For all who read this history should know that this good knight 
was a true register of battles. 



LIFE OF BAYARD 349 

rara, with the duke, sent one of his agents to propose 
an aUiance with the duke's family, and offered to 
make him gonfalonier and captain-general of the 
church, if he would dismiss these alhes; whatever 
direction they might take he knew they would be at 
his mercy, and it was his intention that not one of 
them should escape. The duke gave him hearing, 
regaled him well, communicated his embassy to 
Bayard, and when Bayard, crossing himself in aston- 
ishment, would hardly be persuaded that the Pope 
would be wicked enough to accomplish what he in- 
tended, the duke proposed to buy over the agent, 
and as the Pope wished to perpetrate a piece of vil- 
lany, act upon the principle of like for like. The con- 
versation which ensued may be genuine in the main, 
for the duke reported it to Bayard, and from him it 
is likely that the Loyal Servant directly derived it. 
The duke began with this Messer Augustino by 
stating the reasons why it would be folly in him to 
trust the Pope, who coveted his dominions, and hated 
him more than any other person in the world. He 
then proceeded to state that it would not be easy to 
deceive the French, and impracticable to turn them 
out. But he added, Messer Augustino, the Pope 
is of a very terrible nature, exceeding choleric and 
vindictive, as you well know, and however he may 
trust you now in his secret affairs, he will some day 
or other play you a shrewd trick. Moreover, when 
he dies, what will become of his servants? Another 
pope will succeed, who will not harbour any of them, 
and it is a very bad service except for ecclesiastics. 
He then offered to reward him richly, if he would do 
him good service to rid him of his enemy. This 
precious agent of his Holiness struck a bargain imme- 
diately, and for 2,000 ducats in hand, and a promise 



350 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

of 500 yearly, engaged to poison the Pope within 
eight days. This was so much according to the cus- 
tom of the country, that the duke felt neither com- 
punction in making such a bargain, nor shame in 
communicating it to Bayard. Having found him 
on the ramparts, the following characteristic scene 
ensued. 

"They took one another by the hand, and, as they walked 
upon the ramparts, at a distance from all others, the Duke 
began to say: 'My Lord Bayard, it never fell out but that 
deceivers were themselves deceived in the end. You have 
heard the villany which the Pope would have made me commit 
against you and the French that are here. And in this intent 
he hath sent a man of his to me, as you know. I have so 
brought him over to our side, and changed his purpose, that he 
wiU do to the Pope what he wished to do to you ; for he hath 
assured me that in eight days at the farthest, he shall be no 
more.' 

"The Good Knight, who would never have suspected the 
real truth of the fact, made answer: 'How can that be, my 
Lord, hath he spoken with God?' 'Give yourself no concern 
about the matter,' said the Duke; 'so shall it be.' And they 
went on communing together till he told him that Messer 
Augustino had engaged himself to poison the Pope. Whereat 
the Good Knight said : ' Oh ! my Lord, I can never believe so 
worthy a Prince as you will consent to so black a treachery; 
and were I assured of it, I swear to you, by my soul, that I 
would apprize the Pope thereof, before it were night.' ' Why ? ' 
said the Duke, 'he would have done as much to you and me : 
and you know that we have hung seven or eight spies of his.' 
'No matter for that,' said the Good Knight, 'I never wiU 
consent to the effecting of his death in this manner.' The 
Duke shrugged up his shoulders, spat upon the ground, and 
said : ' My Lord Bayard, would that I had killed all my enemies 
as I did that ! Howbeit, since the thing is not to your liking it 
shall be given up ; and, but God help us, we shall both repent 
of it.' 'Not so, please God,' said the Good Knight. 'But 
I pray you, my Lord, put this fellow into my hands who would 
perform this precious piece of work, and, if I have him not hung 
within an hour, let me be so dealt with in his stead.' 'No, 



LIFE OF BAYARD 351 

my Lord Bayard,' said the Duke ; 'I have assured him of his 
personal safety : but I will go and dismiss him.' Which the 
Duke did as soon as he got back to his palace. What the man 
said or how he acted on his return to the Pope I know not : 
but he executed none of his enterprizes. So he continued about 
the person of his Holiness, who was much grieved at being able 
to discover no method of bringing his schemes to pass." 

Vol. ii. pp. g-ii. 

Bayard's character was shown not less advan- 
tageously when Brescia having been recovered by 
the Venetians, was attacked by the French. There 
were 8,000 troops in the town, and 12,000 or 14,000 
peasantry, who had flocked thither to maintain it 
against their foreign enemies. The Duke of Ne- 
mours could not bring thither more than 12,000 to 
besiege it, but they were "the very flower of knight- 
hood," and Nemours had so gained their hearts that 
they were all ready to lay down their lives for him. 
When the arrangement for the attack was made, 
Bayard was the only person who objected to it. 
The Lord of Molart was appointed with the infantry 
to force the first hne : upon him, he said, and upon 
many worthy persons of his company he had the 
firmest rehance ; but it was of great importance 
never to give back on such occasions. The Vene- 
tians would place their best men (and they had 
good ones) foremost, and arquebussiers with them, 
and great disorder might ensue if the infantry should 
be repulsed, having no gendarmes to support them. 
He proposed, therefore, that some 150 dismounted 
horsemen should accompany the Lord of Molart, 
because, being better armed than the infantry, they 
would be better able to sustain the shock. The 
duke replied, you say truly, my Lord of Bayard, but 
where is the captain who will put himself at the 



352 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

mercy of their arquebussiers ? I will, said the Good 
Knight : and be assured the company whereof I 
have charge will this day do honour to the king and 
you, and service that you shall be sensible of. When 
he had spoken, n'y eust capitaine qui ne regardast Vun 
Vautre, car sans point de fauUe le faict estoit tres- 
dangereux} Whatever we may think of former 
times, the sense of honour was never so generally 
felt in mihtary bodies as it is now. We find men of 
birth and station, with all the advantages of defen- 
sive armour, not willing to expose themselves on a 
service upon which the infantry were ordered. In 
our days, officers as well as men, and men as well as 
officers, are always found ready for any enterprize 
however dangerous, however desperate, even when 
it may almost be called a service of certain death. 
The wonder now is not at him who volunteers, but 
at him who holds back. Did indeed the Christian 
spirit take possession of us with half as much force 
as the military spirit, war itself would be at an end, 
and the diseases of society would have their sure and 
only effectual remedy. 

The duke summoned the city, feehng some com- 
punction at the thought that if it was taken by as- 
sault it would be sacked and all within slaughtered. 
Alas ! says the Loyal Servant, the poor inhabitants 
would gladly have surrendered, but they had not 
the upper hand. The ascent being slippery, Ne- 
mours, "to show that he would not be among the 
last, doffed his shoes," and many followed his example. 
They won the rampart. Bayard was the first person 
who entered, but he received a deep wound in the 
upper part of the thigh, from a pike, which broke 

^ All the captains looked at one another, for it was an affair of 
great danger and no mistake. 



LIFE OF BAYARD 353 

and was left hanging in the wound. Comrade, said 
he, to Molart, make your men march, the town is 
won : as for me I can go no farther, I am slain. And 
that he might not die without confession, he with- 
drew, with the help of two of his archers, who tore 
their shirts to staunch his wound. As soon as the 
citadel was taken, they broke down a door from the 
first house, and carried him on it to the goodHest 
mansion in the neighbourhood. The owner, a man 
of great wealth, had fled to a neighbouring convent, 
leaving his wife and two fair daughters ''in the 
Lord's keeping," rather than be butchered in their 
presence without any possibility of protecting them. 
The daughters hid themselves in a hay-loft, and 
when the soldiers knocked, the mother, putting her 
trust in God, opened the door herself. The happiest 
fortune which ever befell that family was when 
Bayard entered their house. His first orders were 
to set a guard there, and admit none but his own 
people ; and he assured those who had borne him 
and whom he thus employed, that though they 
missed some booty for his sake, they should lose noth- 
ing in the end. The lady of the house fell on her 
knees, and besought him to spare her daughters and 
herself. The Good Knight, who never harboured an 
evil thought, replied. Madam, it may be that I shall 
not recover from this wound of mine, but while I 
live no wrong shall be done to you and your daughters : 
only keep them in their chamber, let them not be 
seen. When the wound had been drest, and he had 
leisure to think of others, he inquired concerning the 
master of the house, had him sought for where his 
wife said that, if hving, he would probably be found, 
and made the family happy by having him safely 
escorted home. They looked upon themselves, how- 



354 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

ever, as his prisoners, and all their goods and chattels 
as his property by the lot of war, "this being the 
case with the other houses which had fallen into the 
hands of the French." And in the hope, seeing his 
generous temper, that a handsome offering might 
prevent his exacting a ruinous sum, the lady, on the 
day he was about to depart, entered his room, ac- 
knowledged his kindness, and, entreating his further 
compassion, presented him with a Httle steel box full 
of ducats. Bayard laughed, and asked how many 
ducats there were there? and the lady, fearing he 
was offended, said only 2,500, but if he were not 
content therewith, they would produce a larger 
sum. Upon his refusing to take any, she entreated 
him to accept that trifling gift as a mark of gratitude, 
with an earnestness which proved her sincerity. 
He then took the box, sent for her daughters, gave 
them 1,000 of the ducats each, toward their marriage 
portions, and accepting the 500, dehvered them to 
his hostess, to be distributed by her, in his behoof, 
among the poor nuns whose convents had been 
pillaged. Such men as Bayard are always unhappily 
too few, and yet in the worst ages there have been 
enough of his stamp to redeem humanity. 

A Httle before the storming of Brescia, an astrologer 
had assured Bayard that he would not fall in the 
dreadful battle which he predicted for the Good Fri- 
day or Easter Sunday following, but that, within 
twelve years at farthest, he would be slain by artil- 
lery; "otherwise," he added, "you would never end 
your days in the field, for you are so beloved by those 
under your command, that they would sooner die 
than leave you in jeopardy." The story of this 
astrologer is rather remarkable. The battle of 
Ravenna fulfilled his several predictions both as to 



LIFE OF BAYARD 355 

the day, its issue, and the fate of the Duke of Ne- 
mours; of whom Guicciardini says, that "if, as the 
opinion is, death is to be desired when men are come 
to the height of felicity, then surely he died happily," 
— but that with him the very sinew and strength of 
the French army utterly perished. That army had 
suffered much in consequence of its success at Bres- 
cia; so many of the adventurers enriched them- 
selves there, and withdrew in consequence, that the 
Loyal Servant says, this was the ruin of the French 
cause in Italy. They who look in history for proofs 
of that providential government of the world, in 
which the best and wisest men have beheved, may 
see reason to suppose that if Gaston de Foix, the 
young and heroic Duke de Nemours, had resembled 
Bayard as much in humanity and other virtues as 
he did in courage, his career might not so speedily 
have been cut short. But he had shown no mercy 
at Brescia, and made no effort to check the excesses 
of his men. The Loyal Servant tells us, many griev- 
ous things happened, and Guicciardini says that 
"for seven days the city was exposed to the rapacity, 
to the lust, and to the cruelty of the soldiers ; things 
sacred as well as profane being parcel of the prey, 
and no less the Hves than the goods of men." 

The astrologer, who had dehvered his other pre- 
dictions concerning the expected action openly, took 
La Pahsse and Bayard apart, and charged them that 
they should give heed to the Prince on the day of 
battle, for he would be in as great danger of falling 
as ever man was, and he said they might cut off his 
head if they did not find his words fulfilled. The 
duke went forth early that morning armed at all 
points, his surcoat gorgeously embroidered with the 
arms of Navarre and Foix, so as to add inconveniently 



356 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

to the weight of his armour. The sun had just risen, 
and appeared so red, that one of the company said. 
Know you, my lord, what that forebodes? Some 
prince or great officer will die to-day. It must be 
either you or the viceroy. This was said by one 
with whom he was accustomed to jest, and he smiled 
at the words, as a soldier would do, however they 
might have imprest him. Before the action com- 
menced, a parley occurred, in the spirit of the Homeric 
age. Bayard, with the duke and some twenty others, 
was riding along the canal to while away the time, 
when they observed a party of Spaniards about the 
same number, and employed in like manner. He 
advanced towards them alone, and said. Sirs, you 
are amusing yourselves as we are doing, till the fine 
sport begins. I pray you let no guns be discharged 
on your side, and none shall be fired on ours. Their 
commander, Pedro de Paes, (a brave and distinguished 
man, who fell in the battle,) inquired who he might 
be, and with a soldierly spirit replied, upon hearing 
his name, On my honour, Senor de Bayard, I am 
right glad to see you, though we have gained nothing 
by your arrival, but may reckon your army 2,000 
men the stronger for it. Would to God there were 
peace between your master and mine, that we might 
have some interviews, for I have loved you for your 
prowess all my life. The Spaniard was then intro- 
duced to Nemours, and those courtesies were ex- 
changed, which even in the heat of war excite a wish 
for peace, and insensibly prepare a way for it. 

One of the bravest and honestest of the German 
mercenaries fell on the French side ; an anecdote 
concerning his death, which the Loyal Servant was 
not acquainted with, is found in the Commentaries 
of the Seiior Alarcon. He had challenged the Span- 



LIFE OF BAYARD 357 

ish colonel, Zamudio, who, as he advanced to meet 
him, exclaimed, "O king, dearly do your favours 
cost me, and well are they deserved on such days as 
this!" Both parties might have agreed in that 
feeling ; for the German captain, Jacob, fell by Za- 
mudio's pike, and Zamudio himself was killed in the 
course of the battle. In revenge of Jacob's death, 
a feat was performed by Captain Fabian, which 
may remind the reader of Arnold von Winkelraid. 
It required, perhaps, more bodily powers, and did not 
involve the same inevitable self-devotement. The 
Spaniards had stationed a strong body with crossed 
pikes on the edge of their foss : Fabian, who was a 
person of prodigious strength and stature, took his 
own pike crossway, laid it upon those of the enemy, 
and bearing their points towards the ground, en- 
abled those of his comrades who were near to rush in : 
mats pour le passer y eut un meurtre merveilleux: car 
oncques gens nefeirent plus de defense que les Espagnols, 
qui encores n'ayans plus bras ne jambe entiere mor- 
doient leurs ennemis} Bayard himself seems to have 
owed his life in this battle, when he was rashly 
adventuring it, to the presence of mind of a Span- 
iard. Returning from the pursuit with some forty 
gendarmes, he fell in with two Spanish companies, 
who were retreating in good order from the field. 
Spent as his own party was, and inferior in numbers, 
he was preparing to charge them, when the Spanish 
captain stept forward and said, "Sir, what are you 
about? You cannot suppose yourself strong enough 
to beat us ! You have won the battle and killed all 
our men ; be satisfied with the honour you have 

^ But in passing him there was a wondrous slaughter; for never 
did men make a braver defense than the Spaniards, who when they 
were without a sound arm or leg continued to bite their enemies. 



358 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

gained, and let us go with our lives, since by God's 
will we have escaped!" Bayard felt this address 
as became him. It is added, that he demanded their 
colours, and that they were given him ; if it was so, 
it adds no grace to the story. But they parted 
courteously, the Spaniards opening their ranks, and 
the French passing between them. Little did he 
imagine that the duke, attacking these very com- 
panies as rashly as he was about to have done, had 
fallen by their hands. "Had he but suspected this," 
says the Loyal Servant, "he would rather have died 
ten thousand deaths than not have avenged him." 
And yet however strong the desire of vengeance may 
have been in the first emotions of grief. Bayard, in 
his cooler moments, must have felt thankful to 
Providence that the Spanish officer had acted more 
moderately and more wisely than he himself was 
disposed to have done. 

The battle of Ravenna proved fatal to the con- 
querors. The loss which they had there sustained 
was so severe, that they were unable to with- 
stand the fresh forces that were brought against 
them, and in their retreat the Good Knight was 
struck by a falconet shot between the neck and 
shoulder, which laid the shoulder bone bare. He 
was able, however, to cross the Alps, and visit his 
uncle, the Bishop of Grenoble. There he was seized 
with fever, either in consequence of the wound or 
the fatigue which he had undergone, and the Loyal 
Servant puts a lamentation in his mouth at the thought 
of dying, hke a girl, in bed, which would have read 
better in romance than in history. The speech 
ended, however, with a prayer, and a hope of amend- 
ing his evil life. It was just after his recovery that 
that adventure occurred with the damsel, whom her 



LIFE OF BAYARD 359 

mother would have sold to him, which has found its 
way into most collections of anecdotes. 

His death occurred within the time and in the 
manner which the astrologer is said to have foretold. 
He was conducting the rear of the French army, 
when retreating in good order before the Spaniards. 
On such occasions the rear was always his post, and 
he was now making his gendarmes proceed with as 
much composure as if they had been in their own 
country, with no enemy to apprehend, when a stone 
from a harquebuss struck him across the loins and 
fractured his spine. It was one of those wounds 
(as in Nelson's case) in which the stroke of death is 
felt, ana which the sufferer instantly knows to be 
mortal. Jesus ! was the first word which he uttered, 
then, "Oh God, I am slain!" He had ever wished 
to die in battle, and it seems as if, in forecasting the 
end which he desired, he had predetermined how to 
act whenever it might occur: for holding up his 
sword and kissing the cross at its handle, he pro- 
nounced these words audibly. Miserere mei, Deus, 
secundum magnam misericordiam tuam ! ^ He then 
grew faint, but saved himself from falling by holding 
the saddle-bow, till his steward helped him from off 
the horse, and placed him under a tree, and there 
holding his sword as a cross before him, he confessed 
to the steward, there being no priest at hand. The 
Seigneur d'Alegro came up, and to him he said some- 
thing concerning his will. A Swiss captain would 
have carried him off upon pikes, hoping to save him : 
but Bayard felt that the motion would accelerate his 
certain death, and entreated that he might be left, 
and employ the little life that remained in thinking 
about his soul. He besought them to go their way, and 

* Have mercy on me, Lord, according to thy great compassion. 



360 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

not expose themselves to the enemy by remaining 
with him, to whom they could afford no earthly help, 
but he commended his poor soul to them, and de- 
sired the Seigneur d'Alegro to salute the king in 
his name, and say it troubled him that he could do 
him no farther services ; likewise he added, Mes- 
sires the Princes of France, and the gentlemen of 
my company, and all gentlemen of the honoured 
realm of France in general, salute them all when you 
see them, on my part. When the Spaniards came up 
and discovered who he was, he received from them 
that honourable kindness which Bayard's name 
would have commanded from enemies of any nation, 
and which, in the better days of Spain, no people 
were so ready as the Spaniards to exhibit. A tent 
was spread for him, he was laid upon a camp bed, 
and a priest was brought, to whom he confessed 
devoutly, saying, afterwards, these very words — 

"My God! I am assured ^ha thou hast declared thyself 
ever ready to receive into mercy and to forgive whoso shall 
return to thee with a sincere heart, however great a sinner he 
may have been : Alas ! my Creator and Redeemer, I have 
grievously offended thee during my life, of which I repent 
with my whole soul. FuU well I know that, had I spent an 
hundred years in a desert on bread and water, even that would 
not have entitled me to enter thy kingdom of Heaven, unless 
it had pleased thee, of thy great and infinite goodness, to receive 
me into the same ; for no creature is able in this world to merit 
so high a reward, My Father and Saviour ! I entreat thee be 
pleased to pass over the faults by me committed, and show me 
thy abundant clemency instead of thy rigorous justice." 

Vol. ii. pp. 227, 228. 

The Marquis of Pescara came up before he ex- 
pired, and 

"Pronounced a lofty eulogium on him in his own language, 
but to the following effect ; ' Would God, gentle Lord Bayard, 



LIFE OF BAYARD 361 

that, by parting with a quart of my own blood, (so that could 

be done without loss of life,) and by abstaining from flesh for 

two years, I might have kept you whole and my prisoner; 

for my treatment of you should have manifested how highly 

I honoured the exalted prowess that was in you. The first 

tribute of praise that my nation paid you, when they said, 

'Muchos Grisones, y pocos Bayardos,' was not undeservedly 

bestowed ; for since my first acquaintance with arms have I 

never seen or heard tell of any King who can compare with 

you in all admirable qualities : and though I have reason to 

rejoice at beholding you thus, being assured that my master, 

the Emperor, in his wars had no greater and more formidable 

adversary than yourself, nevertheless, when I consider the 

heavy loss which all Knighthood sustains this day, may God 

never aid me if I would not give the half of all I am worth in 

the world that it were otherwise ; but, since from death there 

is no refuge, I make supplication to Him who hath created all 

in his likeness, that he will be pleased to take back your soul 

unto himself." -.71 •• „ ' 

Vol. u. p. 222. 

To have died thus honoured by such an enemy 
must have been only less desirable than to fall in the 
moment of victory and in the height of success. The 
Spanish general appointed certain gentlemen to bear 
the body to a church, where solemn service was per- 
formed over it for two days. His own people then 
carried it home for interment. As they past through 
Savoy, orders were given by the duke that wherever 
the corpse passed or rested, as much respect should 
be paid to it as if it were that of his own brother. 
The magistrates of Grenoble, with most of the in- 
habitants and nobles of the surrounding country, 
went out to meet it when it drew nigh, and it was 
finally deposited in a convent of Minims, half a mile 
from that city, which his uncle the bishop had 
founded. A monument was afterwards erected to 
him there, not by the king whom he had served so 
faithfully, not by the nation of which he is the proud- 



362 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

est boast, not even by his family, but by Scipio de 
Poulloud, Seigneur de St. Agnin, an individual no 
otherwise connected with him than as being a native 
of the same province, and an admirer of his worth. 
He was in the forty-eighth year of his age when he 
was slain. He left a natural daughter, whose mother 
was a Milanese of noble birth. If it be true that 
Bayard had promised marriage to this Milanese 
lady both by word and in writing, he cannot in this 
instance be said to have been sans reproche. The 
Loyal Servant indeed tells us that he was no saint; 
but it may be questioned whether any saint of his 
age left so useful an example. 

We must judge of men according to the standard 
of their own times and the circumstances in which 
they were placed. There are some callings which 
deaden the moral sense, some which directly harden 
the heart, some which produce the even more injuri- 
ous effect of perverting our perceptions of right and 
wrong. These are their effects upon ordinary minds ; 
and where the bent of the individual's disposition 
is towards evil, natural obhquity is easily ripened into 
thorough wickedness. We have thus such politi- 
cians as Shaftesbury, such lawyers as Jefferies, such 
commanders as Buonaparte. On the other hand, 
there are spirits so happily constituted as to resist 
these injurious influences, and preserve, under all 
circumstances, the integrity of their nature. Few 
are the generations in which some such examples 
have not appeared for the relief and consolation of 
humanity. Success cannot elevate them, neither 
are they to be depressed by ill fortune ; the former 
only exhibits more conspicuously the grace and 
beauty of their character, the latter only displays 
its dignity and its strength. We have thus such 



LIFE OF BAYARD 363 

statesmen as Clarendon, such lawyers as Sir Thomas 
More, such soldiers as Bayard. It may be said of 
him, as of one of our own distinguished officers who 
fell in the Peninsular War — 

"That in the midst of camps his manly breast 
Retained its youthful virtue ; that he walk'd 
Thro ' blood and evil uncontaminate ; 
And that the stern necessity of war 
But nurtured with its painful discipline 
Thoughtful compassion in his gentle soul, 
And feelings such as man should cherish still 
For aU of woman born." 

If he had merely won victories for France greater 
than those of Turenne or Villars, he would have con- 
ferred less honour upon his country, and rendered 
less service to it, than he has done by the example 
of his personal character. 

Henri IV. used to say, that Montluc's Commen- 
taries should be the soldier's bible. It was a saying 
that would have been more in character with Buona- 
parte, than with the prince from whom it came ; 
for though the book is in its kind incomparably good, 
it is the composition of one who, with all his great 
qualities, was a brutal soldier. Henri should have 
held up Bayard as a model to the military youth of 
France. We, who have Robert of Gloucester, and 
the Black Prince, and Sidney, and Marlborough, 
and Nelson, need not go abroad for examples. Yet 
it is desirable that nations should be conversant 
with foreign models, and particularly with those 
which may be found among their hereditary and 
natural rivals. In proportion as this knowledge is 
cultivated they will be disposed to judge more gen- 
erously, more kindly, and more equitably of each 
other. We are glad therefore that Enghsh readers 



364 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

may now become as familiar with the history of the 
Chevalier Bayard as they were with his name ; and 
a wish may be expressed that the French in return 
would make themselves acquainted with the English 
knight, sans peur et sans reproche, Sir Philip Sidney. 
Quarterly Review, xxxii, 355-397. (October, 1825.) 



SIEGE OF ZARAGOZA (1808) 

Important as the battle of Baylen was in its 
direct and immediate consequences to the Spaniards, 
their cause derived greater celebrity and more per- 
manent strength from the defence of Zaragoza. 

Order had been restored in that city from the 
hour when Palafox assumed the command. Implicit 
confidence in the commander produced implicit and 
alert obedience, and preparations were made with 
zeal and activity proportioned to the danger. When 
the new Captain- General declared war against the 
French, the troops which he mustered amounted 
only to 220 men, and the pubhc treasury could 
furnish him with no more than one hundred dollars ; 
sixteen ill-mounted guns were all the artillery in the 
place, and the arsenal contained but few muskets. 
Fowling-pieces were put in requisition, pikes were 
forged, powder was supplied from the mills at Villa- 
feliche, which were some of the most considerable 
in Spain, — for everything else Palafox trusted to 
his country and his cause. And his trust was not in 
vain ; the Zaragozans were ready to endure any 
suffering and make any sacrifice in the discharge of 
their duty ; the same spirit possessed the whole 
country, and from all those parts of Spain which were 
under the yoke of the enemy, officers and soldiers 
repaired to Zaragoza as soon as it was seen that an 
army was collecting there ; many came from Madrid 
and from Pampluna, and some officers of engineers 
from the mihtary academy at Alcala. And the 

36s 



366 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

spirits of the people were encouraged by the discovery 
of a depot of fire arms walled up in the Aljafaria ; 
they had probably been secreted there in the suc- 
cession war, when one party resigned that city to 
its enemies, and their discovery in this time of need 
was regarded by the Zaragozans as a manifestation 
of divine Providence in their favour. The defeats 
which their undisciplined levies sustained at Tudela, 
Mallen, and Alagon abated not their resolution; 
and in the last of these actions a handful of regular 
troops protected their retreat with great steadiness. 
The French general, Lefebvre Desnouettes, pursuing 
his hitherto uninterrupted success, advanced, and 
took up a position very near the city, and covered 
by a rising ground planted with oHve trees. 

Zaragoza was not a fortified town ; the brick wall 
which surrounded it was from ten to twelve feet 
high, and three feet thick, and in many places it was 
interrupted by houses, which formed part of the 
inclosure. The city had no advantages of situation 
for its defence, and would not have been considered 
capable of resistance by any men but those whose 
courage was sustained by a virtuous and holy prin- 
ciple of duty. It stands in an open plain, which 
was then covered with olive grounds, and is bounded 
on either hand by high and distant mountains ; 
but it is commanded by some high ground called the 
Torrero, about a mile to the south-west, upon which 
there was a convent, with some smaller buildings. 
The canal of Aragon divides this elevation from an- 
other rising ground, where the Spaniards had erected 
a battery. The Ebro bathes the walls of the city, 
and separates it from the suburbs ; it has two bridges, 
within musket-shot of each other; one of wood, 
said to be more beautiful than any other of the like 



SIEGE OF ZARAGOZA (1808) 367 

materials in Europe ; the other of freestone, con- 
sisting of seven arches, the largest of which is 122 
feet in diameter; the river is fordable above the 
city. Two smaller rivers, the Galego and the Guerva, 
flow at a little distance from the city, the one on the 
east, the other on the west ; the latter being sep- 
arated from the walls only by the breadth of the 
common road ; both are received into the Ebro. 
Unlike most other places of the peninsula, Zaragoza 
has neither aqueduct nor fountains, but derives its 
water wholly from the river. The people of Tortosa, 
(and probably of the other towns upon its course,) 
drink also of the Ebro, preferring it to the finest 
spring ; the water is of a dirty red colour, but, having 
stood a few hours, it becomes perfectly clear, and has 
a softness and pleasantness of taste, which soon in- 
duces strangers to agree with the natives in their 
preference of it. The population was stated in the 
census of 1787 at 42,600; that of 1797, excellent as 
it is in all other respects, has the fault of not specify- 
ing the places in each district; later accounts com- 
puted its inhabitants at 60,000, and it was certainly 
one of the largest cities in the peninsula. It had 
twelve gates, four of them in the old wall of Augus- 
tus, by whom the older town of Salduba upon the 
same site was enlarged, beautified, and called 
Caesarea- Augusta, or Caesaraugusta ; a word easily 
corrupted into its present name.^ 

The whole city is built of brick ; even the convents 
and churches were of this coarse material, which was 
bad of its kind, so that there were cracks in most of 
these edifices from top to bottom. The houses are 
not so high as they usually are in old Spanish towns, 

^ The Spaniards, by a more curious corruption, call Syracuse, 
Zaragoza de Sicilia. 



368 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

their general height being only three stories; the 
streets are, as usual, very narrow and crooked ; there 
are, however, open market-places ; and one very 
wide, long, and regularly built street, formerly called 
the Calle Santa, having been the scene of many 
martyrdoms, but now more commonly known by 
the name of the Cozo. The people, like the rest of 
the Aragonese, and their neighbours, the Catalans, 
have been always honourably distinguished in Span- 
ish history for their love of liberty; and the many 
unavailing struggles which they have made dur- 
ing the last four centuries, had not abated their 
attachment to the good principles of their forefathers. 
Within the peninsula, (and once indeed throughout 
the whole of Catholic Europe,) Zaragoza was famous 
as the city of our Lady of the Pillar, whose legend is 
still so firmly believed by the people, and most of 
the clergy in Spain, that it was frequently appealed 
to in the proclamations of the different generals and 
Juntas, as one of the most popular articles of the 
national faith. The legend is this : when the apos- 
tles, after the resurrection, separated and went to 
preach the gospel in different parts of the world, 
St. James the elder, (or Santiago as he may more 
properly be called in his mythological history,) 
departed for Spain, which province Christ himself 
had previously commended to his care. When he 
went to kiss the hand of the Virgin, and request her 
leave . to set off, and her blessing, she commanded 
him, in the name of her Son, to build a church to her 
honour in that city of Spain wherein he should make 
the greatest number of converts, adding, that she 
would give him farther instructions concerning the 
edifice upon the spot. Santiago set sail, landed in 
Galicia, and, having preached with little success 



SIEGE OF ZARAGOZA (1808) 369 

through the northern provinces, reached Caesarea- 
Augusta, where he made eight disciples. One night, 
after he had been conversing and praying with them 
as usual on the banks of the river, they fell asleep, 
and just at midnight the apostle heard heavenly 
voices sing, Ave Maria gratia plena! He fell on his 
knees, and instantly beheld the Virgin upon a marble 
pillar in the midst of a choir of angels, who went 
through the whole of the matin service. When this, 
was ended, she bade him build her church around 
that pillar, which his Lord, her blessed Son, had sent 
him by the hands of his angels ; there, she told him, 
that pillar was to remain till the end of the world, 
and great mercies would be vouchsafed there to those 
who supplicated for them in her name. Having said 
this, the angels transported her back to her house at 
Jerusalem, (for this was before the Assumption) and 
Santiago, in obedience, erected upon that spot the 
first church which was ever dedicated to the Virgin. 
Cathedral service was performed both in this church 
and in the see, and the meetings of the chapter were 
held alternately in each. The interior of each was 
of the most imposing kind. When the elder of these 
joint cathedrals was erected. Pope Gelasius granted 
indulgencies to all persons who would contribute 
toward the work, and thus introduced a practice 
which contributed as much to the grandeur and 
magnificence of ecclesiastical architecture, as to laxity 
of morals and the prevalence of superstition. 

Many mournful scenes of bigotry and superstition 
have been exhibited in Zaragoza ; but, in these fiery 
trials which Buonaparte's tyranny was preparing for 
the inhabitants, the dross and tinsel of their faith 
disappeared, and its pure gold remained. The French, 
accustomed as they were to undervalue the Spanish 



370 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

character, had spoken with peculiar contempt of the 
Zaragozans. "Few persons," they said, "are to be 
seen among them who distinguish themselves by their 
dress ; there is little of that elegant attire so observ- 
able in large cities. All is serious and regular, — 
dull and monotonous. The place seems without 
any kind of resource, because the inhabitants use no 
effort to obtain any ; — accustomed to a state of 
apathy and languor, they have not an idea of the 
possibiHty of shaking it off." With this feeling, 
equally despising the strength of the place, and the 
character of the people, the French proceeded to 
besiege the capital of Aragon. A party of their 
cavalry entered the town on the 14th, perhaps in 
pursuit of the retreating patriots ; they thought to 
scour the streets, but they were soon made to feel, 
that the superiority of discipKned soldiers to citizens 
exists only in the field. 

On the following morning, the French, with part of 
their force, attacked the outposts upon the canal, 
and, with their main body, attempted to storm the 
city by the gate called Portillo. A desperate con- 
flict ensued. The Aragonese fought with a spirit 
worthy of their cause. They had neither time, nor 
room, nor necessity for order. Their cannon, which 
they had hastily planted before the gates, and in the 
best situations without the town, were served by any 
persons who happened to be near them; any one 
gave orders who felt himself competent to take the 
command. A party of the enemy entered the city, 
and were all slain. Lefebvre perceived that it was 
hopeless to persist in the attack with his present 
force, and drew off his troops, having suffered great 
loss. The patriots lost about 2000 men killed, and 
as many wounded. In such a conflict the circum- 



SIEGE OF ZARAGOZA (1808) 371 

stances are so materially in favour of the defendants, 
that the carnage made among the French must have 
been much greater. Some part of their baggage and 
plunder was abandoned in their retreat. The con- 
querors would have exposed themselves by a rash 
pursuit, but Palafox exhorted them not to be im- 
patient, telling them, that the enemy would give 
them frequent opportunities to display their courage. 
While he thus restrained their impetuosity, he con- 
tinued to excite their zeal. This victory, he said, 
was but the commencement of the triumphs which 
they were to expect under the powerful assistance of 
their divine patrons. The precious blood of their 
brethren had been shed in the field of glory, — on 
their own soil. Those blessed martyrs required new 
victims; let us, he added, be prepared for the sac- 
rifice ! 

The Zaragozans had obtained only a respite ; de- 
feated as he was, Lefebvre had only removed beyond 
the reach of their guns ; his troops were far superior 
to any which they could bring against him ; and it 
was not to be doubted that he would soon return in 
greater force, to take vengeance for the repulse and 
the disgrace which he had suffered. A regular siege 
was to be expected ; how were the citizens to sustain 
it with their brick walls, without heavy artillery, and 
without troops who could sally to interrupt the be- 
siegers in their works? In spite of all these dis- 
couraging circumstances, confiding in God and their 
own courage, they determined to defend the streets 
to the last extremity. Palafox, immediately after 
the repulse of the enemy, set out to muster reinforce- 
ments, to provide such resources for the siege as he 
could, and to place the rest of Aragon in a state of 
defence, if the capital should fall. He was accom- 



372 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

panied by Colonel Burton, his friend and aide-de- 
camp ; Lieut.-Colonel Beillan, of the engineers ; 
Padre Basilio, and Tio Jorge. With these com- 
panions and a small escort he left the city by the 
suburbs, crossed the Ebro at Pina, and collecting on 
the way about 1400 soldiers who had escaped from 
Madrid, formed a junction at Belchite with Baron 
Versage and some newly raised troops from Calatayud. 
Their united numbers amounted to some 7000 men, 
with 100 horse and four pieces of artillery. Small as 
this force was, and still more inefficient for want of 
discipline than of numerical strength, Palafox resolved 
upon making an attempt with it to succour the city. 
The prudence of this determination was justly ques- 
tioned by some ; others proposed the strange measure 
of marching to Valencia : this probably originated 
with some of the stray soldiers who were at liberty 
to seek their fortune where they pleased, and the 
proposal was so well received that a considerable 
party prepared to set off in that direction, without 
orders. But Palafox called them together, exhorted 
them to do their duty, and offered passports to as 
many as chose to leave him in the moment of danger. 
The consequence of this offer was that not a man 
departed. From Almunia, where he had rested a 
day, he then marched towards Epila, thinking to 
advance to the village of La Muela, and thus place 
the invaders between his little army and the city, in 
the hope of cutting them off from their reinforce- 
ments. Lefebvre prevented this, by suddenly at- 
tacking him at Epila, on the night of the 23d : after a 
most obstinate resistance, the superior arms and disci- 
pline of the French were successful. The wreck of this 
gallant band retreated to Calatayud, and afterwards, 
with great difficulty, threw themselves into Zaragoza. 



SIEGE OF ZARAGOZA (1808) 373 

The besiegers' army was soon reinforced by General 
Verdier, with 2500 men, besides some battaHons of 
Portugueze, who, according to the devilish system of 
Buonaparte's tyranny, had been forced out of their 
own country, to be pushed on in the foremost ranks, 
wherever the first fire of a battery was to be received, 
a line of bayonets clogged, or a ditch filled, with 
bodies. They occupied the best positions in the 
surrounding plain, and, on the 27th, attacked the 
city and the Torrero ; but they were repulsed with 
the loss of 800 men, six pieces of artillery, and five 
carts of ammunition. By this time, they had invested 
nearly half the town. The next morning they re- 
newed the attack at both places ; from the city 
they were again repulsed, losing almost all the cavalry 
who were engaged. But the Torrero was lost through 
the alleged misconduct of an artillery officer, who 
was charged with having made his men abandon the 
batteries at the most critical moment. For this he 
was condemned to run the gauntlet six times, the 
soldiers beating him with their ramrods, and after 
this cruelty he was shot. 

The French, having now received a train of mor- 
tars, howitzers, and twelve-pounders, which were of 
sufficient calibre against mud walls, kept up a con- 
stant fire, and showered down shells and grenades 
from the Torrero. About twelve hundred were 
thrown into the town, and there was not one building 
that was bomb proof within the walls. After a 
time, the inhabitants placed beams of timber to- 
gether, endways, against the houses, in a sloping 
direction, behind which those who were near when 
a shell fell, might shelter themselves. The enemy 
continued also to invest the city more closely, while 
the Aragonese made every effort to strengthen their 



374 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

means of defence. They tore down the awnings 
from their windows, and formed them into sacks, 
which they filled with sand, and piled up before the 
gates, in the form of a battery, digging round it a 
deep trench. They broke holes for musketry in the 
walls and intermediate buildings, and stationed 
cannon where the position was favourable for it. 
The houses in the environs were destroyed. "Gar- 
dens and olive grounds," says an eye-witness, "that 
in better times had been the recreation and support 
of their owners, were cheerfully rooted up by the 
proprietors themselves, wherever they impeded the 
defence of the city, or covered the approach of the 
enemy." Women of all ranks assisted ; they formed 
themselves into companies, some to relieve the 
wounded, some to carry water, wine, and provisions, 
to those who defended the gates. The Countess 
Burita instituted a corps for this service ; she was 
young, delicate, and beautiful. In the midst of the 
most tremendous fire of shot and shells, she was seen 
coolly attending to those occupations which were 
now become her duty ; nor throughout the whole of 
a two months' siege did the imminent danger, to 
which she incessantly exposed herself, produce the 
sHghtest apparent effect upon her, or in the slightest 
degree bend her from her heroic purpose. Some of 
the monks bore arms ; others exercised their spiritual 
offices to the dying : others, with the nuns, were 
busied in making cartridges which the children dis- 
tributed. 

Among threescore thousand persons there will 
always be found some wicked enough for any em- 
ployment, and the art of corrupting has constituted 
great part of the French system of war. During the 
night of the 28th the powder magazine, in the area 



SIEGE OF ZARAGOZA (1808) 375 

where the bull-fights were performed, which was in 
the very heart of the city, was blown up, by which 
fourteen houses were destroyed, and about 200 
persons killed. This was the signal for the enemy to 
appear before three gates which had been sold to them. 
And while the inhabitants were digging out their 
fellow-citizens from the ruins, a fire was opened upon 
them with mortars, howitzers, and cannons, which 
had now been received for battering the town. Their 
attack seemed chiefly to be directed against the gate 
called Portillo, and a large square building near it, 
without the walls, and surrounded by a deep ditch ; 
though called a castle, it served only for a prison. 
The sand-bag battery before this gate was frequently 
destroyed, and as often reconstructed under the fire 
of the enemy. The carnage here throughout the 
day was dreadful. Augustina Zaragoza, a handsome 
woman of the lower class, about twenty-two years of 
age, arrived at this battery with refreshments, at 
the time when not a man who defended it was left 
alive, so tremendous was the fire which the French 
kept up against it. For a moment the citizens hesi- 
tated to re-man the guns. Augustina sprung for- 
ward over the dead and dying, snatched a match 
from the hand of a dead artilleryman, and fired off 
a six-and-twenty pounder ; then, jumping upon the 
gun, made a solemn vow never to quit it alive during 
the siege. Such a sight could not but animate with 
fresh courage all who beheld it. The Zaragozans 
rushed into the battery, and renewed their fire with 
greater vigour than ever, and the French were re- 
pulsed here, and at all other points, with great slaugh- 
ter. On the morning of this day a fellow was detected 
going out of the city with letters to Murat. It was 
not till after these repeated proofs of treasonable 



376 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

practices, that the French residents in Zaragoza, 
with other suspected persons, were taken into custody. 

Lefebvre now supposing that his destructive bom- 
bardment must have dismayed the people, and con- 
vinced them how impossible it was for so defenceless 
a city to persist in withstanding him, again attempted 
to force his way into the town, thinking that, as soon 
as his troops could find a lodgement within the gates, 
the Zaragozans would submit. On the 2d of July, 
a column of his army marched out of their battery, 
which was almost within musket-shot of the Portillo, 
and advanced towards it with fixed bayonets, and 
without firing a shot. But when they reached the 
castle, such a discharge of grape and musketry was 
opened upon their flank, that, notwithstanding the 
most spirited exertions of their officers, the column 
immediately dispersed. The remainder of their 
force had been drawn up to support their attack, and 
follow them into the city; but it was impossible to 
bring them a second time to the charge. The general, 
however, ordered another column instantly to ad- 
vance against the gate of the Carmen, on the left of 
the Portillo. This entrance was defended by a sand- 
bag battery, and by musketeers, who lined the walls 
on each side, and commanded two out of three ap- 
proaches to it; and here also the French suffered 
great loss, and were repulsed. 

The military men in Zaragoza considered these 
attacks as extremely injudicious. Lefebvre probably 
was so indignant at meeting with any opposition 
from a people whom he despised, and a place which, 
according to the rules and pedantry of war, was not 
tenable, that he lost his temper, and thought to subdue 
them the shortest way, by mere violence and superior 
force. Having found his mistake, he proceeded to 



SIEGE OF ZARAGOZA (1808) 377 

invest the city still more closely. In the beginning 
of the siege, the besieged received some scanty suc- 
cours ; yet, however scanty, they were of importance. 
Four hundred soldiers from the regiment of Estrema- 
dura, small parties from other corps, and a few 
artillerymen got in. Two hundred of the militia of 
Logrono were added to these artillerymen, and soon 
learnt their new service, being in the presence of an 
enemy whom they had such righteous reason to 
abhor. Two four-and-twenty-pounders and a few 
shells, which were much wanted, were procured from 
Lerida. The enemy, meantime, were amply sup- 
plied with stores from the magazine in the citadel of 
Pamplona, which they had so perfidiously seized on 
their first entrance, as allies, into Spain. Hitherto 
they had remained on the right bank of the Ebro. 
On the nth of July they forced the passage of the 
ford, and posted troops enough on the opposite side 
to protect their workmen while forming a floating 
bridge. In spite of all the efforts of the Aragonese, 
this bridge was completed on the 14th; a way was 
thus made for their cavalry, to their superiority in 
which the French were mostly indebted for all their 
victories in Spain. This gave them the command of 
the surrounding country; they destroyed the mills, 
levied contributions on the villages, and cut off 
every communication by which the besieged had 
hitherto received suppHes. These new difficulties 
called out new resources in this admirable people and 
their general, — a man worthy of commanding such 
a people in such times. Corn mills, worked by 
horses, were erected in various parts of the city; 
the monks were employed in manufacturing gun- 
powder, materials for which were obtained by im- 
mediately collecting all the sulphur in the place, by 



378 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

washing the soil of the streets to extract its nitre, and 
making charcoal from the stalks of hemp, which in 
that part of Spain grows to a magnitude that would 
elsewhere be thought very unusual. 

By the end of July the city was completely invested, 
the supply of food was scanty, and the inhabitants 
had no reason to expect succour. Their exertions 
had now been unremitted for forty-six days, and 
nothing but the sense of duty could have supported 
their bodily strength and their spirit under such 
trials. They were in hourly expectation of another 
general attack, or another bombardment. They had 
not a single place of security for the sick and the 
children, and the number of wounded was daily 
increased by repeated skirmishes, in which they 
engaged for the purpose of opening a communication 
with the country. At this juncture they made one 
desperate effort to recover the Torrero. It was in 
vain; and convinced by repeated losses, and es- 
pecially by this repulse, that it was hopeless to make 
any effectual sally, they resolved to abide the issue of 
the contest within the walls, and conquer or perish 
there. 

On the night of the second of August, and on the 
following day, the French bombarded the city from 
their batteries opposite the gate of the Carmen. A 
foundhng hospital, which was now filled with the 
sick and wounded, took fire, and was rapidly con- 
sumed. During this scene of horror, the most in- 
trepid exertions were made to rescue these helpless 
sufferers from the flames. No person thought of 
his own property or individual concerns, — every one 
hastened thither. The women were eminently con- 
spicuous in their exertions, regardless of the shot and 
shells which fell about them, and braving the flames 



SIEGE OF ZARAGOZA (1808) 379 

of the building. It has often been remarked, that 
the wickedness of women exceeds that of the other 
sex ; — for the same reason, when circumstances, 
forcing them out of the sphere of their ordinary 
nature, compel them to exercise manly virtues, they 
display them in the highest degree, and, when they 
are once awakened to a sense of patriotism, they 
carry the principle to its most heroic pitch. The 
loss of women and boys, during this siege, was very 
great, fully proportionate to that of men ; they were 
always the more forward, and the difficulty was to 
teach them a prudent and proper sense of their 
danger. 

On the following day, the French completed their 
batteries upon the right flank of the Guerva, within 
pistol-shot of the gate of St. Engracia, so called 
from a splendid church and convent of Jeronimites, 
situated on one side of it. This convent was, on 
many accounts, a remarkable place. Men of letters 
beheld it with reverence, because the excellent his- 
torian Zurita spent the last years of his life there, 
observing the rules of the community, though he 
had not entered into the order ; and because he was 
buried there, and his countryman and fellow-la- 
bourer, Geronymo de Blancas, after him. Devotees 
revered it, even in the neighbourhood of our Lady of 
the Pillar, for its reUcs and the saint to whom it 
was dedicated. . . . 

On the 4th of August, the French opened batteries 
within pistol-shot of this church and convent. The 
mud walls were levelled at the first discharge; and 
the besiegers, rushing through the opening, took the 
batteries before the adjacent gates in reverse. Here 
General Mori, who had distinguished himself on many 
former occasions, was made prisoner. The street of 



380 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

St. Engracia, which they had thus entered, leads into 
the Cozo, and the corner buildings where it thus 
terminated, were on the one hand the convent of 
St. Francisco, and on the other the General Hospital. 
Both were stormed and set on fire ; the sick and the 
wounded threw themselves from the windows to 
escape the flames, and the horror of the scene was 
aggravated by the maniacs, whose voices raving or 
singing in paroxysms of wilder madness, or crying 
in vain to be set free, were heard amid the confusion 
of dreadful sounds. Many fell victims to the fire, 
and some to the indiscriminating fury of the assail- 
ants. Those who escaped were conducted as pris- 
oners to the Torrero ; but when their condition had 
been discovered, they were sent back on the morrow, 
to take their chance in the siege. After a severe 
contest and dreadful carnage, the French forced their 
way into the Cozo, in the very centre of the city, and, 
before the day closed, were in possession of one 
half of Zaragoza. Lefebvre now believed that he had 
effected his purpose, and required Palafox to sur- 
render, in a note containing only these words : 
"Headquarters, St. Engracia. Capitulation!" The 
heroic Spaniard immediately returned this reply : 
"Headquarters, Zaragoza. War to the knife's 
point!" 

The contest which was now carried on is unex- 
ampled in history. One side of the Cozo, a street 
about as wide as Pall-mall, was possessed by the 
French; and, in the centre of it, their general, Ver- 
dier, gave his orders from the Franciscan convent. 
The opposite side was maintained by the Aragonese, 
who threw up batteries at the openings of the cross 
streets, within a few paces of those which the French 
erected against them. The intervening space was 



SIEGE OF ZARAGOZA (1808) 381 

presently heaped with dead, either slain upon the 
spot, or thrown out from the windows. Next day 
the ammunition of the citizens began to fail; the 
French were expected every moment to renew their 
efforts for completing the conquest, and even this 
circumstance occasioned no dismay, nor did any one 
think of capitulation. One cry was heard from the 
people, wherever Palafox rode among them, that, if 
powder failed they were ready to attack the enemy 
with their knives, — formidable weapons in the 
hands of desperate men. Just before the day closed, 
Don Francisco Palafox, the general's brother, en- 
tered the city with a convoy of arms, and ammuni- 
tion, and a reinforcement of three thousand men, 
composed of Spanish guards, Swiss, and volunteers of 
Aragon, — a succour as Httle expected by the Zara- 
gozans, as it had been provided against by the enemy. 
The war was now continued from street to street, 
from house to house, and from room to room ; pride 
and indignation having wrought up the French to a 
pitch of obstinate fury, little inferior to the devoted 
courage of the patriots. During the whole siege, 
no man distinguished himself more remarkably than 
the curate of one of the parishes, within the walls, 
by name P. Santiago Sass. He was always to be 
seen in the streets, sometimes fighting with the 
most determined bravery against the enemies, not 
of his country alone, but of freedom, and of all vir- 
tuous principles, wherever they were to be found ; 
at other times, administering the sacrament to the 
dying, and confirming with the authority of faith, 
that hope, which gives to death, under such cir- 
cumstances, the joy, the exultation, the triumph, 
J and the spirit of martyrdom. Palafox reposed the 
utmost confidence in this brave priest, and selected 



382 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

him whenever anything pecuHarly difficult or hazard- 
ous was to be done. At the head of forty chosen 
men, he succeeded in introducing a supply of powder 
into the town, so essentially necessary for its defence. 
This most obstinate and murderous contest was 
continued for eleven successive days and nights, 
more indeed by night than by day ; for it was almost 
certain death to appear by daylight within reach of 
those houses which were occupied by the other party. 
But under cover of darkness, the combatants fre- 
quently dashed across the street to attack each other's 
batteries ; and the battles which began there, were 
often carried on into the houses beyond, where they 
fought from room to room, and floor to floor. The 
hostile batteries were so near each other, that a 
Spaniard in one place made way under cover of the 
dead bodies, which completely filled the space between 
them, and fastened a rope to one of the French can- 
nons ; in the struggle which ensued, the rope broke, 
and the Zaragozans lost their prize at the very mo- 
ment when they thought themselves sure of it.^ 

* It is asserted by the French, in their oflBcial account, that, after 
many days' fighting, they won possession of many cloisters which had 
been fortified, three-fourths of the city, the arsenal, and all the 
magazines ; and that the peaceable inhabitants, encouraged by these 
advantages, hoisted a white flag, and came forward to offer terms 
of capitulation; but that they were murdered by the insurgents; 
for this is the name which the French, and the tyrant whom they 
served, applied to a people fighting in defence of their country, 
and of whatever could be dear to them. Unquestionably, if any 
traitors had thus ventured to show themselves in the heat of the con- 
test, they would have been put to death as certainly as they would 
have deserved it; and, if the thing had occurred, it would be 
one fact more to be recorded in honour of the Zaragozans; but 
there is no other authority for it than the French official account, 
in which account the result of the siege is totally suppressed. The 
circumstance, had it really taken place, would not have been 
omitted in Mr. Vaughan's Narrative, and in the accounts published 
by the Spaniards. 



SIEGE OF ZARAGOZA (1808) 383 

A new horror was added to the dreadful circum- 
stances of war in this ever memorable siege. In 
general engagements the dead are left upon the 
field of battle, and the survivors remove to clear 
ground and an untainted atmosphere ; but here — 
in Spain, and in the month of August, there where 
the dead lay the struggle was still carried on, and 
pestilence was dreaded from the enormous accumula- 
tion of putrifying bodies. Nothing in the whole 
course of the siege so embarrassed Palafox as this 
evil. The only remedy was to tie ropes to the French 
prisoners, and push them forward amid the dead 
and dying, to remove the bodies, and bring them 
away for interment. Even for this necessary office 
there was no truce, and it would have been certain 
death to the Aragonese who should have attempted 
to perform it ; but the prisoners were in general 
secured by the pity of their own soldiers, and in this 
manner the evil was, in some degree, diminished. 

A council of war was held by the Spaniards on the 
8th, not for the purpose which is too usual in such 
councils, but that their heroic resolution might be 
communicated with authority to the people. It 
was, that in those quarters of the city where the 
Aragonese still maintained their ground, they should 
continue to defend themselves with the same firm- 
ness : should the enemy at last prevail, they were 
then to retire over the Ebro into the suburbs, break 
down the bridge, and defend the suburbs till they 
perished. When this resolution was made pubhc, 
it was received with the loudest acclamations. But 
in every conflict the citizens now gained ground upon 
the soldiers, winning it inch by inch, till the space 
occupied by the enemy, which on the day of their 
entrance was nearly half the city, was gradually 



384 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

reduced to about an eighth part. Meantime, intel- 
ligence of the events in other parts of Spain was 
received by the French, — all tending to dishearten 
them ; the surrender of Dupont, the failure of Mon- 
cey before Valencia, and the news that the Junta of 
that province had dispatched six thousand men to 
join the levies in Aragon, which were destined to 
reheve Zaragoza. During the night of the 13th, 
their fire was particularly fierce and destructive ; 
after their batteries had ceased, flames burst out in 
many parts of the buildings which they had won; 
their last act was to blow up the church of St. En- 
gracia ; the powder was placed in the subterranean 
church, — and this remarkable place, — this monu- 
ment of fraud and creduHty, — the splendid theatre 
wherein so many feelings of deep devotion had been 
excited, — which so many thousands had visited in 
faith, and from which unquestionably many had 
departed with their imaginations elevated, their 
principles ennobled, and their hearts strengthened, 
was laid in ruins. In the morning the French 
columns, to the great surprise of the Spaniards, 
were seen at a distance, retreating over the plain, on 
the road to Pamplona. 

The history of a battle, however skilfully narrated, 
is necessarily uninteresting to all except military men ; 
but in the detail of a siege, when time has destroyed 
those considerations, which prejudice or pervert our 
natural sense of right and wrong, every reader sym- 
pathizes with the besieged, and nothing, even in 
fictitious narratives, excites so deep and animating 
an interest. There is not, either in the annals of 
ancient or of modern times, a single event recorded 
more worthy to be held in admiration, now and for 
evermore, than the siege of Zaragoza. Will it be 



SIEGE OF ZARAGOZA (1808) 385 

said that this devoted people obtained for themselves, 
by all this heroism and all these sacrifices, nothing 
more than a short respite from their fate? Woe be 
to the slavish heart that conceives the thought, and 
shame to the base tongue that gives it utterance ! 
They purchased for themselves an everlasting re- 
membrance upon earth, — a place in the memory 
and love of all good men in all ages that are yet to 
come. They performed their duty; they redeemed 
their souls from the yoke ; they left an example to 
their country, never to be forgotten, never to be out 
of mind, and sure to contribute to and hasten its 

deliverance. 

Htstory of the Peninsular War, en. IX. 



2C 



THE UPRISING AT MARVAM 

A PoRTUGUEZE of the old stamp, by name Antonio 
Leite de Araujo Ferreira Bravo, held the office of 
Juiz de Fora at Marvam, a small town about eight 
miles from Portalegre, surrounded with old walls. 
Of the many weak places upon that frontier it was 
the only one which, in the short campaign of 1801, 
resisted the Spaniards in their unjust and impolitic 
invasion, and was not taken by them; and this was 
in great measure owing to his exertions. When the 
French usurped the government, a verbal order came 
from the Marquez d'Alorna, at that time general of 
the province, to admit either French or Spanish troops 
as friends, and give them possession of the place. 
Antonio Leite protested against this, maintaining that 
no governor ought to deliver up a place intrusted to 
his keeping without a formal and authentic order : 
proceedings were instituted against him for his opposi- 
tion, and he was severely reprehended, this being 
thought punishment enough at that time, and in a 
town where no commotion was dreamt of. When 
the decree arrived at Marvam, by which it was 
announced that the house of Braganza had ceased to 
reign, Antonio Leite sent for the pubhc notaries of 
the town, and resigned his office, stating, in a formal 
instrument, that he did this because he would not be 
compelled to render that obedience to a foreign power 
which was due to his lawful and beloved Sovereign, 
and to him alone. Then taking with him these wit- 
nesses to the church of the Misericordia, he deposited 

386 



THE UPRISING AT MARVAM 387 

his wand of office in the hands of an image of N. 
Senhor dos Passes, and in the highest feelings of old 
times called upon the sacred image to keep it till it 
should one day be restored to its rightful possessor. 
He then returned to his house, and put himself in 
deep mourning. The order arrived for taking down 
the royal arms. He entreated the Vereador not to 
execute it, upon the plea that the escutcheon here was 
not that of the Braganza family, but of the kingdom, 
put up in the reign of Emanuel, and distinguished 
by his device ; and when this plea was rejected, he 
took the shield into his own keeping, and laid it care- 
fully by, to be preserved for better days. 

The Juiz seems to have been a man who had read 
the chronicles of his own country till he had thor- 
oughly imbibed their spirit. These actions were so 
little in accord with the feelings and manners of the 
present age, that they were in all likelihood ascribed 
to insanity, and that imputation saved him from the 
persecution which he would otherwise have incurred. 
But when the national feeling began to manifest 
itself, such madness was then considered dangerous, 
and the Corregedor of Portalegre received orders 
from Lisbon to arrest him. Before these orders 
arrived he had begun to stir for the deliverance of 
his country, and had sent a confidential person with a 
letter to Galluzo, the Spanish commander at Badajoz, 
requesting aid from thence to occupy Marvam ; 
men could not be spared ; and the messenger returned 
with the unwelcome intelligence that before he left 
Badajoz the business on which he went had trans- 
pired, and was publicly talked of. Perceiving now 
that his fife was in danger, his first care was that no 
person might suffer but himself, and therefore he 
laid upon his table a copy of the letter which he had 



388 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

written, from which it might be seen that the invita- 
tion was his single act and deed ; having done this, 
he seemed rather to trust to Providence than to take 
any means for securing himself. It was not long 
before, looking out at the window, he saw the Correge- 
dor with an adjutant of Kellermann's and a party of 
horse coming to his house. He had just time to bid 
the servant say he was not within, and slip into the 
street by a garden door. He had got some distance, 
when the Corregedor saw him, and called after him, 
saying he wanted to settle with him concerning the 
quartering of some troops. Antonio Leite knew 
what his real business was too well to be thus deceived, 
and quickened his pace. The town has two gates, 
one of which was fastened, because the garrison was 
small : toward that however he ran, well knowing 
that if he were not intercepted at the other, he should 
be pursued and surely overtaken. Joaquim Jose de 
Matos, a Coimbra student, then at home for the 
vacation, met him, and offered to conceal him in 
his house ; but the Juiz continued to run, seeing that 
the soldiers were in pursuit, dropt from the wall, 
escaped with little hurt, and then scrambled down 
the high and steep crag upon which it stands. Matos, 
thinking that he had now involved himself, ran also, 
and being of diminutive stature, squeezed himself 
through a hole in the gate; they then fled together 
toward Valencia de Alcantara, and had the satisfac- 
tion, at a safe distance, of seeing a Swiss escort come 
round the walls to the place where the Juiz had 
dropt. 

The Spanish frontier being so near, their escape 
was easy; but when they had been a few days at 
Valencia de Alcantara, Matos determined upon re- 
turning to his family, knowing that there was no 



THE UPRISING AT MARVAM 389 

previous charge against him, and thinking that the 
act of having spoken to the Juiz could not be punished 
as a crime. In this he was mistaken. The governor 
of Marvam was a worthy instrument of the French. 
He not only arrested Matos, but his father also, an 
old man who was dragged from his bed, where he 
lay in a fit of the gout, to be thrown into a Portugueze 
prison ; and a physician, whom he suspected of being 
concerned in the scheme of an insurrection. This 
news reached the Juiz ; it was added, that his own 
property had been sequestered, he himself outlawed, 
and all persons forbidden to harbour him, and that a 
French escort had arrived to carry the three prisoners 
to Elvas. He could not endure to think that he 
should be, however innocently, the occasion of their 
death, and therefore determined to attempt at least 
their deliverance at any hazard. It was not difficult 
to find companions at a time when all usual occupa- 
tions were at a stand, and every man eager to be in 
action against an odious enemy. With a few Spanish 
volunteers he crossed the frontier, and there raised 
the peasantry, who knew and respected him : with 
this force he proceeded to a point upon the road 
between Marvam and Elvas ; the escort had passed, 
— but he had the satisfaction to learn that it had 
not gone for the prisoners, only to bring away the 
ammunition and spike the guns. This raised their 
spirits ; they directed their course to Marvam, cHmbed 
the walls during the night, opened the prison, seized 
the governor, and without the slightest opposition 
from two hundred Portugueze troops, whom he had 
just obtained from Elvas to secure the place, and 
who, if they knew what was passing, did not choose to 
notice it, the adventurers returned to Valencia in 
triumph with their friends, and with the governor 



3 go SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

prisoner. The Junta of Valencia did not now hesi- 
tate, in conformity to an order from Badajoz, to give 
the Juiz regular assistance ; he entered Marvam in 
triumph with this auxihary force, and the Prince 
Regent was proclaimed there by the rejoicing inhabi- 
tants, at the very time when Beja was in flames. 
A few days afterwards a Spanish detachment from 
Albuquerque entered Campo-Mayor with the same 
facility. Some jealousies which arose there, as well 
as at Marvam, from the inconsiderate conduct of 
the Spanish officers in issuing orders as if they were 
in their own territories, were put an end to by the 
formation of a Junta, of which the Spanish com- 
mander at Campo-Mayor was made president. The 
example of these places was immediately followed 
at Ouguela, Castello de Vide, Arronches, and Porta- 
legre; and the insurrection thus extended through 
all that part of the province which is to the north 
of Elvas. History of the Peninsular War, ch. X. 



SYSTEM OF THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY 

The system of the Jesuit Reductions was now fully 
matured. That system has been equally the subject 
of panegyric and of calumny. It will not be difficult 
to separate truth from falsehood, and represent this 
extraordinary commonwealth, without any feelings 
of superstition to mislead us on one hand, or of fac- 
tious and interested hatred on the other. 

They who founded this commonwealth profited 
by the experience of their brethren in Brazil : they 
knew what had been effected by Nobrega and his 
successors, and how mournfully the fruit of their 
labours had been lost; they represented therefore 
to the Court of Madrid that it was in vain to pursue 
the same course in Paraguay. Even if the tyranny 
of the Europeans did not consume those whom it 
could enslave, and drive others into the woods, the 
example of their lives would counteract all the lessons 
of reUgion and morality which the most zealous 
instructors could inculcate. Here were innumerable 
tribes, addicted to the vices, prone to the supersti- 
tions, and subject to the accumulated miseries of 
the savage Hfe ; suffering wrongs from the Spaniards, 
and seeking vengeance in return ; neither acknowledg- 
ing King nor God ; worshipping the Devil in this 
world, and condemned to him everlastingly in the 
next. These people the Jesuits undertook to reclaim 
with no other weapons than those of the Gospel, 
provided they might pursue their own plans, without 
the interference of any other power; and provided 

391 



392 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

the Spaniards, over whose conduct they could have 
no control, were interdicted from coming among 
them. The Spanish Government, whose real con- 
cern for the salvation of the Indians within its ex- 
tensive empire, however erroneous in its direction, 
should be remembered as well as the enormities of its 
first conquest, granted these conditions; and the 
Jesuits were thus enabled to form establishments 
according to their own ideas of a perfect common- 
wealth, and to mould the human mind, till they made 
a community of men after their own heart. Equally 
impressed with horror for the state of savage man, 
and for the vices by which civilized society was 
everywhere infected, they endeavoured to reclaim 
the Indians from the one, and preserve them from 
the other by bringing them to that middle state 
wherein they might enjoy the greatest share of per- 
sonal comforts, and be subject to the fewest spiritual 
dangers. For this purpose, as if they understood 
the words of Christ in their literal meaning, they 
sought to keep their converts always like little chil- 
dren in a state of pupillage. Their object was not 
to advance them in civilization, but to tame them 
to the utmost possible docility. Hereby they in- 
volved themselves in perpetual contradictions, of 
which their enemies did not fail to take advantage: 
for on one hand they argued with irresistible truth 
against the slave-traders, that the Indians ought to 
be regarded as human, rational, and immortal beings ; 
and on the other they justified themselves for treat- 
ing them as though they were incapable of self-con- 
duct, by endeavouring to establish, that though they 
were human beings, having discourse of reason, and 
souls to be saved or lost, they were nevertheless of an 
inferior species. They did not venture thus broadly 



SYSTEM OF THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY 393 

to assert a proposition which might well have been 
deemed heretical, but their conduct and their argu- 
ments unavoidably led to this conclusion. 

Acting upon these views, they formed a Utopia 
of their own. The first object was to remove from 
their people all temptations which are not inherent 
in human nature ; and by establishing as nearly 
as possible a community of goods, they excluded a 
large portion of the crimes and miseries which em- 
bitter the life of civilized man. For this they had 
the authority of sages and legislators : if they could 
have found as fair a ground-work for the mythology 
of Popery in the scriptures as for this part of their 
institutions, the bible would not have been a prohib- 
ited book wherever the influence of the Jesuits ex- 
tended. There was no difficulty in beginning upon 
this system in a wide and thinly-peopled country; 
men accustomed to the boundless liberty of the savage 
life would more readily perceive its obvious advan- 
tages, than they could be made to comprehend the 
more complicated relations of property, and the bene- 
fits of that inequahty in society, of which the evils 
are apparent as well as numerous. The master of 
every family had a portion of land allotted him suffi- 
cient for its use, wherein he cultivated maize, mandubi, 
a species of potatoe, cotton, and whatever else he 
pleased; of this land, which was called Abamba,^ 

1 Azara affirms that the Jesuits compelled the Indians of both 
sexes and of all ages, to work for the common stock, and suffered no 
person to work for his own benefit. T. 2, p. 234. This is a calumny 
beyond all doubt; for that the Jesuits accumulated nothing from 
Paraguay is most certain. He says that the private field was only 
introduced in later times, to accustom them to the use of property, 
when the Court had begun to interfere, and represented that they 
had kept their converts long enough like rabbits in a warren : and 
this, he says, could be the only use of such an allotment, inasmuch 
as the Indians raised nothing for sale, and would have been fed by 



394 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

or the private possession, he was tenant as long as 
he was able to cultivate it ; when he became too old 
for the labour, or in case of death, it was assigned to 
another occupier. Oxen for ploughing it were lent 
from the common stock. Two larger portions, called 
Tupamba, or God's Possession, were cultivated for 
the community, one part being laid out in grain and 
pulse, another in cotton; here the inhabitants all 
contributed their share of work at stated times, and 
the produce was deposited in the common storehouse, 
for the food and clothing of the infirm and sick, 
widows, orphans, and children of both sexes. From 
these stores whatever was needed for the church, or 
for the public use, was purchased, and the Indians 
were supplied with seed, if, as it often happened, 
they had not been provident enough to lay it up for 
themselves : but they were required to return from 
their private harvest the same measure which they 
received. The public tribute also was discharged 
from this stock : this did not commence till the year 
1649, when Philip IV., honouring them at the same 
time with the title of his most faithful vassals, and 
confirming their exemption from all other services, 
required an annual poll-tax of one peso of eight reales 
from all the males between the ages of twenty-two 
and fifty; that of all other Indian subjects was five 
pesos. There was an additional charge of an hundred 
pesos as a commutation for the tenths ; but these 
payments produced Httle to the treasury; for as 
the kings of Spain allowed a salary of six hundred 
pesos to the two missionaries, and provided wine for 

the community if they had not fed themselves. He adds, that the 
Jesuits actually took their produce, like that of the public fields, for 
the common storehouse. Whatever Azara says on this subject is 
to be received with great suspicion. 



SYSTEM OF THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY 395 

the sacrament and oil for the lamps, which burnt 
day and night before the high altar, (both articles 
of exceeding cost, the latter coming from Europe, 
and the former either from thence or from Chili,) 
the balance upon an annual settlement of accounts 
was very trifling on either side. 

The municipal government of every Reduction 
was the same in appearance as that of all Spanish 
towns. There was a Corregidor,^ two Alcaldes, an 
Alcalde de la Hermandad, whose jurisdiction related 
to affairs in the country, four Regidores,^ an Alguazil 
Mayorf a Procurador, and a Secretary.^ These 
officers were annually elected by the community; 
but if the Rector did not approve the choice, he 
recommended other persons, so that in reality the 
power of appointment was vested in him ; they were 
afterwards confirmed by the governor of the prov- 
ince, — a confirmation which was as mere a formality 
as the election. The officers themselves were of 
essential use, but their authority was little more than 
nominal ; for the system of government was an abso- 
lute Hierocracy. There were two Jesuits in every 
Reduction ; the Cura, or Rector, who from his 
knowledge of the Indian character, his tried abilities, 
and his perfect acquaintance with the language, was 
fully competent to govern them; and a younger 

^ Called in Guarani Poroquaitara, qui agenda jubet (who orders 
what is to be done). 

2 Called Cabildoiguara, they who belong to the Chamber, or 
Cahildo. 

^ Ibirararuzu, primus inter eos qui manu virgam praeferunt. 

* This officer they called Qtiatiaapobara, he who paints. Ipsi 
scripturam non norant, sed a pictura, quam rudi quodam modo 
norant, scripturse nomen accomodarunt. Peramas de Administra- 
tione, b'c, 216, note. (They did not themselves know writing, but 
from the rude kind of painting which they had, they adopted a word 
for writing.) 



396 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

member, who was either newly arrived from Europe, 
or had lately completed his studies at Cordoba, and 
acted as the Rector's assistant, while he acquired 
the language, and qualified himself for the labours 
of a Saint-Errant, and for the service of the Company 
in a higher station. One of these was to be always 
in the Reduction, while the other went round to 
visit the sick in the territory belonging to it, and 
attended to those who were engaged in any occupa- 
tion at a distance. The Superior of the Mission 
was constantly employed in visiting the Reductions 
within his jurisdiction, and the Provincial also in- 
spected them at stated times. There were two con- 
fraternities in each : one of St. Michael the Archangel, 
in which men were admitted from the age of twelve 
till thirty : the other of the Mother of God, to which 
only the most pious subjects were chosen, who made 
themselves over by bond to the service of the Queen 
of Angels ; the deed was signed by the member him- 
self, and countersigned by the Rector, and was then 
regarded with so much veneration that the Indian 
kept it in the same bag with his rehcs. There were 
also certain Indians appointed to watch over the 
health of the community, and attend the sick, but 
always under the Jesuits' direction. They seem to 
have been trained to this office ; for when the Mis- 
sionary visited the sick two boys at least always 
accompanied him. Their business was to go every 
morning through the Reduction, each having his 
district, and report if any disease had appeared; 
and they were also twice a day to report the state 
of the patients to the Rector, that the sacrament 
might always be administered in time. These officers 
are compared to the Par abolanioi the primitive church, 
in imitation of whom they were perhaps instituted; 



SYSTEM OF THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY 397 

their badge of office was a tall wand with a cross at 
the top, from whence they were called Curuzuyu, the 
Cross-bearers. The Missionaries had gardens of 
every medicinal herb ^ with whose properties they 
were acquainted ; not only such as were indigenous, 
but those from Europe which would bear the climate. 
As in the Jesuits' system nothing was the result 
of fortuitous circumstances, but all had been pre- 
conceived and ordered, the towns were all built upon 
the same plan. The houses were placed on three 
sides of a large square. At first they were mere 
hovels : the frame-work was of stakes firmly set in 
the ground, and canes between them, well secured 
either with withes or thongs ; these were then plas- 
tered with a mixture of mud, straw, and cowdung. 
Shingles of a tree called the Caranday were found 
the best roofing ; and a strong compost, which was 
water proof, was made of clay and bullocks' blood. 
As the Reductions became more settled they improved 

^ Sigismund Asperger, who was a physician before he entered the 
Company, and died at the age of an hundred and fourteen, after its 
extinction, practiced forty years in Paraguay, and left a collection 
of prescriptions, in which only the indigenous plants were employed. 
Some of the Ciiranderos, or empirical practitioners of that country, 
have copies of this work, in which, Azara observes, some new specifics 
might possibly be found. The balm of aguaraibay, which he intro- 
duced, was thought so precious, that a certain quantity was sent 
yearly to the king of Spain. It is well known that we are indebted 
to the Jesuits for bark. 

It would have been fortunate if Dom Pernetty had met with this 
manuscript instead of the receipts of his Franciscan friend at Monte- 
video, which he repeats with equal want of sense and of decency. 
His Editor has written under one of these most extraordinary speci- 
mens of Franciscan medicine, or, as it may be called, the Pharma- 
copoeia Serapkica, "Observez que cette recette n'est point de Sydenham 
ou de Boerhaave, — maic dii Pere Rock, Franciscain." (Observe that 
this recipe does not come from Sydenham or Boerhaave, but from 
Father Roch the Franciscan.) Never was a malicious remark more 
properly bestowed. 



398 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

in building ; the houses were more soUdly constructed, 
and covered with tiles. Still, by persons accustomed 
to the decencies of life, they would be deemed miser- 
able habitations, — a single room ^ of about twenty- 
four feet square being all, and the door serving at 
once to admit the light and let out the smoke. The 
houses were protected from sun and rain by wide 
porticos, which formed a covered walk. They were 
built in rows of six or seven each ; these were at regu- 
lar distances, two on each of three sides of the square ; 
and as many parallel rows were placed behind them 
as the population of the place required. The largest 
of the Guarani Reductions contained eight thousand 
inhabitants, the smallest twelve hundred and fifty, 
— the average was about three thousand. On the 
fourth side of the square was the church, having on 
the right the Jesuits' house, and the public work- 
shops, each inclosed in a quadrangle, and on the left 
a walled burial-ground ; behind this range was 
a large garden ; and on the left of the burial-ground, 
but separated from it, was the Widows'-house, built 
in a quadrangle. The enemies of the Jesuits, as 
well as their friends, agree in representing their 
churches as the largest and most splendid in that 
part of the world. Their height was ill proportioned 
to their size, because every pillar was made of a single 
piece of wood, — the trunk of a tree ; but as the 
houses consisted only of one floor, the church was still 
a lofty building in relation to the town. They had 
usually three naves, but some had five; and there 
were numerous windows, which were absolutely 

^ The plan of N. Senora de Candelaria, which Peramas has given, 
represents them as each having two floors and a garret, windows and 
chimnies. This is more probably a blunder of the coarse artist than 
any misrepresentation on the author's part. 



SYSTEM OF THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY 399 

necessary ; ^ for though the church was always 
adorned with flowers, and sprinkled upon festivals 
with orange-flower and rose-water, neither these 
perfumes nor the incense could prevail over the 
odour of an unclean congregation. Glass was scarcely 
known in Paraguay till the middle of the eighteenth 
century; paper was used in its stead, or linen, or 
talc from Tucuman ; but this was costly, and conse- 
quently rare. When glass was introduced, it was 
generally used in the Reductions for the churches 
and the Jesuits' houses; but the southern windows 
of the church were filled up with a sort of alabaster, 
brought at great expense from Peru, which, though 
not transparent,^ admitted a little light : glass would 
not resist the tremendous gales from the south. The 
eggs ^ of the Emu, or American ostrich, were some- 
times used to hold holy water, sometimes placed as 
ornaments upon the altar. The altars, which were 
usually five in number, were remarkable for their 
size and splendour : the only ambition of the Indians 
was to vie with each other in ornamenting their 
churches, which were therefore profusely enriched 
with pictures, sculpture, and gilding, and abundantly 
furnished with images. Pope Gregory the Great 

^ "Necessarie ancor sono, affinche nella State, che ivi e ardentissima, 
possano esalare ifiati e vapori di quella grossolana gente, da cui ricevono 
non poca molestia i celebranti e i predicatori." Muratori, p. 114. 
(They were necessary in order that in the summer, which is there 
very hot, they might allow a vent for the breath of this squalid 
assemblage from which the celebrants and preachers received no 
slight injury.) 

2 Perhaps a stone of the same kind as that which Gemelli Careri 
and Tavernier describe in the mosque at Tauris. 

* The Persians and Turks suspend them among the lamps in their 
mosques. Hence Aladin's request of a Roc's egg, or more properly 
a Simorg's, which excited so much indignation in the Genius of the 
Lamp. 



400 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

called these idols the books of the poor, and the 
Catholic clergy have succeeded in substituting them 
for the bible. The splendour of their vestments and 
the richness of their church plate were boasted of by 
the Jesuits. At each corner of the square was a cross, 
and in the middle a column supporting an image of 
the Virgin, the Magna Mater of this idolatry. 

In the middle of the burial-ground was a little 
chapel, with a cross over the entrance. The area 
was divided into four parts, for adults and children 
of different sexes, — the sexes being separated in 
death as well as in life. A more natural feeling would 
have laid the members of a family side by side ; — 
except in this point the churchyard was what a chris- 
tian place of burial should be, — a sacred garden of 
the dead. The four divisions were subdivided into 
plats, containing ten or twelve graves : these were 
bordered with the sweetest shrubs and flowers, which 
the women, who were accustomed to pray there over 
their departed friends, kept clear of weeds. The 
wider walks were planted on each side alternately 
with palms and orange-trees. The whole was sur- 
rounded by a sort of cloister or piazza, to shelter 
those who attended a funeral, when shelter was 
required. It does not appear that coffins were used : 
the body was wrapt in a cotton cloth : children, after 
the cathohc manner, were drest and adorned for 
their funeral, and accompanied to the grave with 
marks of joy, the bells ringing as for a festival, be- 
cause it was beHeved that they had no purgatory 
through which to pass, but entered immediately 
into a state of beatitude. When the corpse was 
laid in the earth, the women began to cry aloud; 
this howling was called Guaju, and was probably one 
of the savage customs which they were allowed to 



SYSTEM OF THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY 40I 

retain : in the intervals of these outcries they bewailed 
the dead, reciting his praises, and proclaiming what 
honours he had borne, or what might have been in 
store for him had his mortal existence been prolonged. 
Persons who had particularly distinguished them- 
selves by their public merits were buried in the church, 
and this the Indians esteemed above all other honours. 
The houses were built and repaired by the com- 
munity, and allotted by the magistrates as the Rector 
directed : every couple had a house assigned them 
upon their marriage. Highly as the celibate state 
is esteemed among Romish Christians, it was not 
thought prudent to recommend it here ; and the 
Jesuits, inclining to an opposite extreme, wished 
that the males should marry at the age of seventeen, 
and the girls at fifteen.^ These immature unions 
they thought better than the danger of incontinence : 
they were less injurious than they would be in any 
other state of society ; for an Indian under their 
tuition was little more advanced in intellect at seventy 
than at seventeen ; and there were no cares and 
anxieties concerning future subsistence, — no after- 
reckoning between passion and prudence. A ham- 
mock, a few vessels, (the larger ones of pottery, the 
smaller of gourds,) a chest or two, and a few benches 
or stools, were all their furniture, and all their worldly 
goods. Many couples were usually married at the 
same time, and generally on holidays, when the 
church was full, because the Jesuits wished to make 
the ceremony as imposing as possible, for the sake 
of impressing a sense of its solemnity upon the un- 

^ Upon this subject Azara {T. 2, 175) repeats a silly and indecent 
charge against the Jesuits, which he wishes to make the reader believe, 
though he evidently does not, and certainly could not believe it him- 
self. But it came in aid of one of his theories, and therefore he would 
not lose it. 



402 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

converted part of the spectators. It is part of the 
marriage ceremony in the Romish church, that the 
priest deliver a few pieces of silver to the bridegroom, 
to be by him given to the bride in pledge of dowry ; 
but in the Reductions the money and the wedding- 
ring also were church property, and only used upon 
this occasion, because of the scarcity of metals. 
Some addition from the pubhc stores was made to 
the marriage-feast. 

An Indian of the Reductions never knew, during 
his whole progress from the cradle to the grave, 
what it was to take thought for the morrow : all his 
duties were comprized in obedience. The strictest 
discipline soon becomes tolerable when it is certain 
and immutable ; — that of the Jesuits extended to 
everything, but it was neither capricious nor oppres- 
sive. The children were considered as belonging 
to the community; they lived with their parents, 
that the course of natural affection might not be in- 
terrupted ; but their education was a public duty. 
Early in the morning the bell summoned them to 
church, where having prayed and been examined in 
the catechism, they heard mass ; their breakfast was 
then given them at the Rector's from the public 
stores ; after which they were led by an elder, who 
acted both as overseer and censor, to their daily 
occupations. From the earHest age the sexes were 
separated ; they did not even enter the church by 
the same door, nor did woman or girl ever set foot 
within the Jesuits' house. The business of the 
young girls was to gather the cotton, and drive away 
birds from the field. The boys were employed in 
weeding, keeping the roads in order, and other tasks 
suited to their strength. They went to work with 
the music of flutes, and in procession, bearing a Httle 



SYSTEM OF THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY 403 

image of St. Isidro the husbandman, the patron 
saint of Madrid, who was in high odour during the 
seventeenth century : this idol was placed in a con- 
spicuous situation while the boys were at work, and 
borne back with the same ceremony when the morn- 
ing's task was over. In the afternoon they were again 
summoned to church, where they went through the 
rosary ; they had then their dinner in the same man- 
ner as their breakfast, after which they returned 
home to assist their mothers, or amuse themselves 
during the remainder of the day. 

Those children who by the manner in which they 
repeated morning and evening their prayers and 
catechism, were thought to give promise ^ of a good 
voice, were instructed in reading, writing,^ and music, 

^ Muratori has expressed this in strong and singular language. 
"Sogliono con particolar cura i saggi missionari scegliere qtie' fanciulli, 
che da' primi anni si conoscono forniti di miglior metallo di voce." 
(The wise missionaries are accustomed to choose with special care 
those children who from their earliest years are seen to be provided 
with the best vocal metal.) This expression could hardly have origi- 
nated anywhere except in a country where men are considered as 
musical instruments. 

2 P. Florentin de Bourges, therefore (Lettres Edifiantes, T. 8, p. 
384, ed. 1 781), must be incorrect in stating, that from the age of 
seven or eight to twelve the children went to school to learn reading 
and writing, and be instructed in their catechism and their prayers ; 
the girls being in separate schools, where they were taught to spin 
and to sew. There is nothing in the whole of the Lettres Edifiantes 
more suspicious than this Capuchin's account of the manner in which 
he lost himself between Santa Fe and Cordoba, and travelled alone 
through the woods to the Reduction of S. Francisco Xavier in Para- 
guay. He does not even hint at the sUghtest difficulty, danger, or 
inconvenience of any kind upon the way, — totde au contraire; — 
" Tout ce que V etude et I'industrie des hommes ont pu imaginer pour 
rendre un lieu agreable, n'approche point de ce que la simple nature y 
avoit rassemble de beautes." (On the contrary all that the skill and 
effort of men could imagine to make a place agreeable falls short of 
the beauties which nature alone has there collected.) The most 
edifying and audacious miracles in the book are not more extraor- 
dinary than this. 



404 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

and made choristers ; there were usually about 
thirty in a Reduction : this was an honour which 
parents greatly coveted for their children. Except 
these choristers, only those children were taught to 
read and write who were designed for public officers, 
servants of the church, or for medical practice ; and 
they were principally chosen from the families of the 
Caciques ^ and chief persons of the town, — for amid 
this perfect equality of goods, there was an inequality 
of rank, as well as office. The Cacique retained his 
title, and some appearance of distinction, and was 
exempt from tribute. One of the charges against 
the Jesuits was, that they carefully kept their Indians 
in ignorance of the Spanish tongue. Like many 
other charges against them, it was absurd as well 
as groundless. Throughout the Spanish settlements 
in Paraguay, Guarani is the language which children 
learn from their mothers and their nurses ; and which, 
owing to the great mixture of native blood, and the 
number of Indians in slavery or in service, is almost 
exclusively used. Even in the city of Asumpcion, 
sermons were better understood in Guarani than in 
Spanish ; and many women of Spanish name and 
Spanish extraction did not understand the language 
of their fathers. In a country, therefore, where all 
the Spaniards spoke Guarani, the imputed policy of 
keeping the Indians a distinct people could not be 

^ If Dobrizhoffer's remark be well founded, this preference ought 
not to have been shown. He says, "Experti sumus passim Caziquios 
plerumque plebeiis stiipidiores sese, et ad publica oppidi mimia minus 
habiles." (It was generally our experience that the Caciques 
were more stupid than the common people and less apt for the per- 
formance of the public duties of the town.) T. 2, p. 117. There 
were fifty Caciques in the thirty Guarani Reductions. Philip V. 
would have made them all Knights of Santiago, but was dissuaded, 
being assured that they would not regard the honour as they ought. 
Peramas, 156. 



SYSTEM OF THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY 405 

forwarded by preventing them from learning Span- 
ish. It was altogether unnecessary that this lan- 
guage should make part of their education. The 
laws enjoined that it should be taught to such In- 
dians as were desirous of learning it, and accordingly 
there were some in every Reduction who were able 
to read Spanish and Latin as well as their own tongue. 
Their learning, however, was of little extent — the 
Tree of Knowledge was not suffered to grow in a 
Jesuit Paradise. 

Equal care was taken to employ and to amuse the 
people ; and for the latter purpose, a religion which 
consisted so much of externals afforded excellent 
means. It was soon discovered that the Indians 
possessed a remarkable aptitude for music. This 
talent was cultivated for the church-service, and 
brought to great perfection by the skill and assiduity 
of F. Juan Vaz : in his youth he is said to have been 
one of Charles the Fifth's musicians ; but having 
given up all his property, and entered the Company, 
he applied the stores of his youthful art to this pur- 
pose, and died in the Reduction of Loretto, from the 
fatigues which in extreme old age he underwent in 
attending upon the neophytes during a pestilence. 
You would say, says Peramas, that these Indians 
are born, like birds, with an instinct for singing. 
Having also, like the Chinese, an admirable ingenuity 
in imitating whatever was laid before them, they made 
all kinds of musical instruments : the lute, guitarre, 
harp, violin, violin-cello, sackbut, cornet, oboe, spin- 
ette, and organ were found among them ; and the 
choral part of the church service excited the ad- 
miration and astonishment of all Europeans who 
visited the Reductions. 

In dancing according to the ordinary manner, the 



4o6 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

Jesuits saw as many dangers as the old Albigenses, or 
the Quakers in later times ; and like them, perhaps, 
believed that the paces of a promiscuous dance were 
so many steps toward Hell. But they knew that 
to this also the Indians had a strong propensity, and 
therefore they made dancing a part of all their reh- 
gious festivities. Boys and youths were the per- 
formers ; the grown men and all the females assisted 
only as spectators, apart from each other : the great 
square was the place, and the Rector and his Co- 
adjutor were seated in the church-porch to preside 
at the solemnity. The performances were dramatic 
figure-dances, for which the Catholic mythology 
furnished subjects in abundance. Sometimes they 
were in honour of the Virgin, whose flags and banners 
were then brought forth ; each of the dancers bore a 
letter of her name upon a shield, and in the evolu- 
tions of the dance the whole were brought together 
and displayed in their just order: at intervals they 
stopt before her image, and bowed their heads to 
the ground. Sometimes they represented a battle 
between Christians and Moors, always to the proper 
discomfiture of the Misbelievers. The Three Kings 
of the East formed the subject of another favourite 
pageant; the Nativity of another; but that which 
perhaps gave most delight was the battle between 
Michael and the Dragon, with all his imps. These 
stories were sometimes represented in the form of 
Autos, or Sacred Plays, (like the mysteries of our 
ancient drama) in which no female actors were ad- 
mitted : the dresses and decorations were public 
property, and deposited among the public stores, 
under the Rector's care. The Jesuits, who incor- 
porated men of all descriptions in their admirably- 
formed society, had at one time a famous dancing- 



SYSTEM OF THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY 407 

master in Paraguay, by name Joseph Cardiel ; who, 
whether he had formerly practiced the art as a pro- 
fessor, or was only an amateur, took so much dehght 
in it, that he taught the Indians no fewer than seventy 
different dances, all, we are assured, strictly decorous. 
Sometimes the two arts of music and dancing were 
combined, as in ancient Greece, and the performers, 
with different kinds of hand-instruments, danced in 
accordance to their own playing. 

One great festival in every Reduction was the day 
of its tutelar saint, when the boys represented reli- 
gious dramas ; the inhabitants of the nearest Reduc- 
tions were invited, and by means of these visits a 
cheerful and friendly intercourse was maintained. 
But here, as in most other Cathohc countries, the 
most splendid spectacle was that which, in the naked 
monstrosity of Romish superstition, is called the 
Procession of the Body of God ! On this day the 
houses were hung with the best productions of the 
Guarani loom, interspersed with rich feather-works, 
garlands, and festoons of flowers. The whole line 
of the procession was covered with mats, and strewn 
with flowers and fragrant herbs. Arches were erected 
of branches wreathed with flowers, and birds were 
fastened to them by strings of such length as allowed 
them to fly from bough to bough, and display a 
plumage more gorgeous than the richest produce of 
the vegetable world. Wild beasts were secured beside 
the way, and large vessels of water placed at inter- 
vals, in which there were the finest fish, that all 
creatures might thus by their representatives render 
homage to the present Creator ! The game which 
had been killed for the feast made a part of the spec- 
tacle. Seed reserved for the next sowing was brought 
forth to receive a blessing, and the first fruits of the 



4o8 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

harvest as an offering. The flour-and-water object 
of Romish idolatry went first, under a canopy, which 
was borne by the Cacique and the chief magistrates 
of the town : the royal standard came next : then 
followed the male inhabitants in military array, 
horse and foot, with their banners. There was an 
altar at the head of every street ; the sacrament 
stopt at each, while a mottetto, or anthem, was sung ; 
and the howling of the beasts assorted strangely 
with these strains, and with the chaunting of the 
choristers. Part of the dainties which had been 
exposed were sent to the sick ; the men dined in public 
upon the rest, and a portion of the feast was sent to 
the women at their houses. After a sermon, one of 
the chief inhabitants repeated a summary ^ of the 
discourse to the men, in the great square, or in the 
court before the Jesuits' house ; an older man did 
the same to the women. Practice had made them so 
expert in this, that their report was sometimes almost 
a verbal repetition. 

Upon hoHdays the men amused themselves, after 
evening service, with mock-battles, or shooting ar- 
rows at a mark, or playing with a ball of gum-elastic, 
which they struck with the upper part of the foot. 
On working-days, if they had any leisure from public 
or private occupation, they went fowHng, hunting, 
and fishing. Some were employed as shepherds 
and herdsmen, and in tending the horses of the com- 
munity. The women had their full share of labour ; 
they provided the houses with wood and water; 
they assisted their husbands in cultivating the private 
ground ; they were the potters ; and the mistress of 
every family received weekly a certain portion of raw 

^ A Guarani of Loretto composed a volume of these summaries, 
which Peramas praises, adding that he had often found it useful. 



SYSTEM OF THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY 409 

cotton, to be spun for the common stores.^ Con- 
siderable progress had been made both in the useful 
and ornamental arts. Besides carpenters, masons, 
and blacksmiths, they had turners, carvers, painters, 
and gilders ; they cast bells and built organs. In 
these arts they were instructed by some of the lay- 
brethren, among whom artificers of every kind were 
found. Metal was brought from Buenos Ayres, 
at an enormous cost, having been imported there 
from Europe. They were taught enough of mechanics 
to construct horse-mills, enough of hydraulics to 
raise water for irrigating the lands, and supplying 
their stews, and pubUc cisterns for washing. A 
Guarani, however nice the mechanism, could imitate 
anything which was set before him. There were 
several weavers in every Reduction, who worked for 
the pubUc stock ; and a certain number were employed 
for the use of individuals, women taking their thread 
to the steward, and receiving an equal weight in 
cloth when it had passed through the loom, the weav- 
ers being paid from the treasury. This was the 
produce of their private culture, and in this some 
little incitement was afforded to vanity and volun- 
tary exertion; for they were suppHed every year 
with a certain quantity of clothing, and what they 
provided themselves was so much finery. In their 
unreclaimed state some of these tribes were entirely 
naked, and the others nearly so, — but the love of 
dress became almost a universal passion among them 
as soon as they acquired the first rudiments of civi- 
lization. "Give them any thing fine," says Dobriz- 

1 Azara (2, 250) says, that only the musicians, sacristans, and 
choristers were taught to use the needle ; the women doing no needle- 
work except spinning. Needlework, indeed, could little be wanted, 
except for the service of the church, and the dress of the Jesuits 
perhaps. 



4IO SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

hoffer, *'and — in caelum jusseris, ibunt." ^ This, 
therefore, was one of the ways by which his colleagues 
enticed them to Heaven. 

The dress of the men was partly Spanish, partly 
Indian, consisting of shirt, doublet, breeches, and the 
poncho, called among them aobaci, a garment which 
the Spaniards in these countries have very generally 
adopted from the southern tribes. It is the rudest 
of all modes of dress, but far ^ from being the least 
commodious, — a long cloth, with a sHt in the middle, 
through which the head is put ; the two halves then 
fall before and behind to a convenient length, and 
the sides being open, the arms are left unimpeded. 
In the Reductions these were made of cotton; the 
common people wore them of one colour, and each 
man was provided with a change ; for persons in 
office, they were woven with red or blue stripes. 
The women, when they appeared at church, and other 
pubhc occasions, were covered from head to foot with 
a cotton cloak, which left only the face and the throat 
visible. Their domestic and common dress was 
lighter,^ and better adapted for business. The hair 

^ Bid them scale heaven and they will go. 

^ Ridiculam dices rem ; atqui nee ridicula est, et eadem commodissima 
ad equitandum, sive quid aliud agendum sit. Sane Hispani vel nobilis- 
simi, cum equitant vel ruri sunt, non alio utuntur iliac sago, quod ipsi 
vacant poncho. Hoc uniim interest, quod his multo pretio ejusmodi 
amictus is constet oh exquisitiorem materiam, inlextosque labores. 
Peramas, § 20I. (You might think it ridiculous, yet it is by no 
means ridiculous but very well suited to riding or any other kind of 
work. Indeed, the very noblest Spaniards when they ride or are 
Uving in the country use no other garment than this, which they 
call a poncho. There is only this difference, that in their case a 
cloak of this kind costs much more on account of the finer material 
and the embroidery.) 

* Azara (2, 252) says, the cloth whereof this common dress was 
made was so open in its texture as not to answer the purpose of 
decent concealment. This I have no doubt is false. 



SYSTEM OF THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY 411 

was collected in a net, after the Spanish and Portu- 
gueze fashion ; but when they went abroad it was 
worn loose. They used no kind of head-dress, nor 
any covering for the feet and legs ; Peramas confesses 
that an alteration in this latter point would have 
been desirable, for the purpose of protecting them from 
snakes. Brazen ear-rings were worn, and necklaces 
and bracelets of coloured beads : such things are 
so universal among women, through all gradations 
of society, from the lowest point to the highest degree 
of civiHzation which has yet been attained, that a love 
of trinketry seems almost to be characteristic of the 
sex. On gala-days the magistrates were dressed in a 
full Spanish suit, with hat, and shoes, and stockings : 
this finery was not their own, and was only suppKed 
from the public property for the occasion. The per- 
sons also who ofi&ciated at the altar wore shoes and 
stockings during the service ; but when that was 
ended they went barefooted again, Hke the rest of 
their countrymen. 

Every morning, after mass, the Corregidor waited 
upon the Rector, told him what public business was 
to be done in the day, and informed him if anything 
deserving reprehension had occurred since yester- 
day's report. In such a community there could be 
few subjects for litigation : if a dispute arose which 
the friends of the parties could not adjust, they were 
brought before the Rector, who heard both parties 
in person, and pronounced a final sentence. The 
punishment for criminal cases was stripes and im- 
prisonment ; the prisoner was led to mass every day 
in bonds : if the offence were such as would in other 
places have been punished with death, he was kept 
a year in close confinement and in chains, during 
which time he was sparingly dieted, and frequently 



412 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

disciplined with stripes ; at the year's end he was 
banished from the Reductions, and turned out in 
a direction toward the Spanish settlements. The 
magistrates were not allowed to inflict any of these 
punishments without the Rector's approbation ; but 
such cases rarely occurred. For as the aim of the 
Jesuits was to keep their people in a state of perpetual 
pupillage, the Indians were watched as carefully as 
children under the most vigilant system of school- 
discipline. All persons were to be in their houses 
at a certain hour in the evening, after which the 
patrole immediately began their rounds, for the double 
purpose of guarding against any surprize from the 
savages, (a danger which was always possible,) and 
of seeing that no person left his home during the night, 
except for some valid reason. The patroles were 
chosen with as much care among the most docile 
subjects, as if they had been designed for the service 
of the church. Overseers also were appointed, whose 
business it was to go from place to place during the 
day, and see that none were idle, and that the cattle 
with which individuals were entrusted either for 
their own or the public use, were not neglected or 
abused. Man may be made either the tamest or the 
most ferocious of animals. The Jesuits' discipline, 
beginning with birth and ending only with death, 
ensured that implicit obedience which is the first 
duty of Monachism, and was the great object of their 
legislation. Beside the overseers who inspected the 
work of the Indians, there were others who acted as 
inspectors of their moral conduct, and when they dis- 
covered any misdemeanour, clapt upon the offender 
a penitential dress, and led him first to the church 
to make his confession in public, and then into the 
square to be publicly beaten. It is said that these 



SYSTEM OF THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY 413 

castigations were always received without a mur- 
mur, and even as an act of grace, — so completely 
were they taught to lick the hand which chastised 
and fed them. The children were classed according 
to their ages, and every class had its inspectors, 
whose especial business it was to watch over their 
behaviour ; some of these censors stood always 
behind them at church with rods, by help of which 
they maintained strict silence and decorum. This 
system succeeded in effectually breaking down the 
spirit. Adults, who had eluded the constant super- 
intendance of their inspectors, would voluntarily 
accuse themselves, and ask for the punishment which 
they had merited ; but by a wise precaution they 
were not allowed to do this in public till they had 
obtained permission, and that permission was sel- 
dom accorded to the weaker sex. They would often 
enquire of the priest if what they had done were or 
were not a sin ; the same system which rendered 
their understanding torpid, producing a diseased 
irritabihty of conscience, if that may be called con- 
science which was busied with the merest trifles, 
and reposed implicitly upon the priest. In conse- 
quence of their utter ignorance of true morality, and 
this extreme scrupulosity, one of their confessions 
occupied as much time as that of ten or twelve Span- 
iards. The Pope, in condescension to their weak- 
ness, indulged them with a jubilee every year; and 
on these occasions the Missionaries of the nearest 
Reductions went to assist each other. The Jesuits 
boast that years would sometimes pass away without 
the commission of a single deadly sin, and that it was 
even rare to hear a confession which made absolu- 
tion necessary. Few vices, indeed, could exist in 
such communities. Avarice and ambition were ex- 



414 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

eluded; there was little room for envy, and little 
to excite hatred and malice. Drunkenness, the sin 
which most easily besets savage and half-civilized 
man, was effectually prevented by the prohibition 
of fermented liquors : and against incontinence every 
precaution was taken which the spirit of Monachism 
could dictate. It has been seen how the sexes were 
separated, from the earHest age, and all the inhabi- 
tants coupled almost as early as the course of nature 
would permit; and lest the nightly watch and the 
daily vigilance of the inspectors should prove insuffi- 
cient preservatives, the widows, and women whose 
husbands were employed at a distance, unless they 
had infants at the breast, were removed into a sepa- 
rate building adjoining the burial-ground, and inclosed 
from the town. Their idolatry came in aid of this 
precautionary system : no person who had in the 
slightest degree trespassed against the laws of mod- 
esty could be worthy to be accounted among the 
servants of the Queen of Virgins. 

The exclusion of the Spaniards from this common- 
wealth excited so much suspicion as well as enmity, 
that it could not long be maintained to that full extent 
which the Jesuits desired. In later times, therefore, 
ingress was permitted to the six towns north of the 
Parana, and the inhabitants of Corrientes came also 
to the Reduction of Candelaria, which is on the 
southern side. But the privilege was strictly ob- 
served in the other settlements between the Parana 
and the Uruguay, and in all those beyond the latter 
river, upon the grounds that by the water-communi- 
cation they were abundantly supplied with all they 
wanted from Buenos Ayres ; and that if the door 
were once opened, runaway slaves and mulattoes 
would fly into these parts. Where the intercourse 



SYSTEM OF THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY 415 

was allowed, it was exclusively for the purpose of 
commerce ; the inn for strangers was apart from the 
Indians' dwellings, and when the exchange of com- 
modities was effected, the strangers were dismissed. 
Money was scarcely known in Paraguay, and the 
capital being the most inland part of the province, 
it was less in use there than in any other place. All 
officers at Asumpcion were paid in kind ; everything 
had its fixed rate of barter, and he who wanted to 
purchase one article gave another in payment for it. 
Among the Reductions there was no circulating 
medium of any kind. They had factors at Santa 
Fe and at Buenos Ayres, who received their commodi- 
ties, and having paid the tribute from the products, 
returned the surplus in tools, colours for painting, 
oil and salt, neither of which the country produced, 
vestments of linen and silk, gold thread for church- 
ornaments, European wax for church-tapers, and wine 
for what in the Romish religion is called the sacrifice. 
They exported cotton and tobacco ; rosaries, and 
little saints, articles which were in great demand 
in Paraguay and Tucuman, and at Buenos Ayres, 
were distributed gratuitously, as incitements to reli- 
gion, and as means of conciliating favour ; they were 
given especially to those Spaniards who lived remote 
from Spanish settlements, and who were very thank- 
ful for toys in which they had almost as much faith 
as a negro in his greegree. 

History of Brazil, II, 333-356- 



THE MANUFACTURING SYSTEM 

J. HAD provided us with letters to a gentleman in 
Manchester; we delivered them after breakfast, 
and were received with that courtesy which a foreigner 
when he takes with him the expected recommenda- 
tions is sure to experience in England. He took 
us to one of the great cotton manufactories, showed us 
the number of children who were at work there, and 
dwelt with delight on the infinite good which resulted 
from employing them at so early an age. I listened 
without contradicting him, for who would lift up his 
voice against Diana in Ephesus ! — proposed my 
questions in such a way as not to imply, or at least 
not to advance, any difference of opinion, and returned 
with a feeling at heart which makes me thank God 
I am not an Englishman. 

There is a shrub in some of the East Indian islands 
which the French call veloutier ; it exhales an odour 
that is agreeable at a distance, becomes less so as you 
draw nearer, and, when you are quite close to it, 
is insupportably loathsome. Alciatus himself could 
not have imagined an emblem more appropriate to 
the commercial prosperity of England. 

Mr. remarked that nothing could be so bene- 
ficial to a country as manufactures. "You see these 
children, sir," said he. "In most parts of England 
poor children are a burthen to their parents and to 
the parish ; here the parish, which would else have 
to support them, is rid of all expense ; they get their 
bread almost as soon as they can run about, and by 
the time they are seven or eight years old bring in 

416 



THE MANUFACTURING SYSTEM 417 

money. There is no idleness among us : — they 
come at five in the morning ; we allow them half an 
hour for breakfast, and an hour for dinner; they 
leave work at six, and another set relieves them for 
the night; the wheels never stand still." I was 
looking while he spoke, at the unnatural dexterity 
with which the fingers of these little creatures were 
playing in the machinery, half giddy myself with 
the noise and the endless motion ; and when he told 
me there was no rest in these walls, day nor night, I 
thought that if Dante had peopled one of his hells 
with children, here was a scene worthy to have sup- 
plied him with new images of torment. 

"These children, then," said I, "have no time to 
receive instruction." "That, sir," he rephed, "is 
the evil which we have found. Girls are employed 
here from the age you see them till they marry, and 
then they know nothing about domestic work, not 
even how to mend a stocking or boil a potatoe. But 
we are remedying this now, and send the children to 
school for an hour after they have done work." I 
asked if so much confinement did not injure their 
health. "No," he replied, "they are as healthy as 
any children in the world could be. To be sure, 
many of them as they grew up went off in consump- 
tions, but consumption was the disease of the Eng- 
lish." I ventured to inquire afterwards concern- 
ing the morals of the people who were trained up in 
this monstrous manner, and found, what was to be 
expected, that in consequence of herding together 
such numbers of both sexes, who are utterly unin- 
structed in the commonest principles of religion and 
morality, they were as debauched and profligate as 
human beings under the influence of such circum- 
stances must inevitably be ; the men drunken, the 



4l8 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

women dissolute ; that however high the wages they 
earned, they were too improvident ever to lay-by 
for a time of need ; and that, though the parish was 
not at the expense of maintaining them when chil- 
dren, it had to provide for them in diseases induced 
by their mode of life, and in premature debility and 
old age ; the poor-rates were oppressively high, and 
the hospitals and workhouses always full and over- 
flowing. I inquired how many persons were employed 
in the manufactory, and was told, children and all 
about two hundred. What was the firm of the house ? 
— There were two partners. So ! thought I, — a 
hundred to one ! 

"We are well off for hands in Manchester," said 
Mr. ; "manufactures are favourable to popu- 
lation, the poor are not afraid of having a family 
here, the parishes therefore have always plenty to 
apprentice, and we take them as fast as they can 
supply us. In new manufacturing towns they find 
it difficult to get a supply. Their only method is 
to send people round the country to get children from 
their parents. Women usually undertake this busi- 
ness; they promise the parents to provide for the 
children ; one party is glad to be eased of a burthen, 
and it answers well to the other to find the young ones 
in food, lodging and clothes, and receive their wages." 
"But if these children should be ill-used?" said I. 
"Sir," he replied, "it never can be the interest of 
the women to use them ill, nor of the manufacturers 
to permit it." 

It would have been in vain to argue had I been 
disposed to it. Mr. — — was a man of humane and 
kindly nature, who would not himself use anything 
cruelly, and judged of others by his own feelings. 
I thought of the cities in Arabian romance, where 



THE MANUFACTURING SYSTEM 419 

all the inhabitants were enchanted : here Commerce 
is the queen witch, and I had no talisman strong 
enough to disenchant those who were daily drinking 
of the golden cup of her charms. 

We purchase English cloth, English muslins, Eng- 
lish buttons, &c., and admire the excellent skill with 
which they are fabricated, and wonder that from such 
a distance they can be afforded to us at so low a price, 
and think what a happy country is England ! A 
happy country indeed it is for the higher orders ; 
no where have the rich so many enjojrments, no where 
have the ambitious so fair a field, no where have the 
ingenious such encouragement, no where have the 
intellectual such advantages ; but to talk of English 
happiness is like talking of Spartan freedom, the 
Helots are overlooked. In no other country can such 
riches be acquired by commerce, but it is the one who 
grows rich by the labour of the hundred. The hun- 
dred, human beings like himself, as wonderfully fash- 
ioned by Nature, gifted with the Hke capacities, and 
equally made for immortality, are sacrificed body 
and soul. Horrible as it must needs appear, the 
assertion is true to the very letter. They are de- 
prived in childhood of all instruction and all enjoy- 
ment ; of the sports in which childhood instinctively 
indulges, of fresh air by day and of natural sleep by 
night. Their health physical and moral is alike de- 
stroyed ; they die of diseases induced by unremitting 
task work; by confinement in the impure atmosphere 
of crowded rooms, by the particles of metallic or vege- 
table dust which they are continually inhaling; or 
they live to grow up without decency, without com- 
fort, and without hope, without morals, without 
religion, and without shame, and bring forth slaves 
like themselves to tread in the same path of misery. 



420 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

The dwellings of the labouring manufacturers are 
in narrow streets and lanes, blocked up from light 
and air, not as in our country to exclude an insup- 
portable sun, but crowded together because every 
inch of land is of such value, that room for Ught and 
air cannot be afforded them. Here in Manchester 
a great proportion of the poor lodge in cellars, damp 
and dark, where every kind of filth is suffered to 
accumulate, because no exertions of domestic care 
can ever make such homes decent. These places 
are so many hotbeds of infection ; and the poor in 
large towns are rarely or never without an infectious 
fever among them, a plague of their own, which leaves 
the habitations of the rich, like a Goshen of cleanli- 
ness and comfort, unvisited. 

Wealth flows into the country, but how does it 
circulate there ? Not equally and healthfully through 
the whole system ; it sprouts into wens and tumours, 
and collects in aneurisms which starve and palsy 
the extremities. The government indeed raised 
millions now as easily as it raised thousands in the 
days of Elizabeth : the metropolis is six times the 
size which it was a century ago ; it has nearly doubled 
during the present reign ; a thousand carriages drive 
about the streets of London, where, three genera- 
tions ago, there were not an hundred; a thousand 
hackney coaches are licensed in the same city, where 
at the same distance of time there was not one ; they 
whose grandfathers dined at noon from wooden 
trenchers, and upon the produce of their own farms, 
sit down by the light of waxen tapers to be served 
upon silver, and to partake of dehcacies from the 
four quarters of the globe. But the number of the 
poor, and the sufferings of the poor, have continued 
to increase ; the price of every thing which they con- 



THE MANUFACTURING SYSTEM 421 

sume has always been advancing, and the price of 
labour, the only commodity which they have to dis- 
pose of, remains the same. Work-houses are erected 
in one place, and infirmaries in another; the poor- 
rates increase in proportion to the taxes ; and in 
times of dearth the rich even purchase food, and retail 
it to them at a reduced price, or supply them with it 
gratuitously : still every year adds to their number. 
Necessity is the mother of crimes ; new prisons are 
built, new punishments enacted ; but the poor be- 
come year after year more numerous, more miserable, 
and more depraved ; and this is the inevitable tend- 
ency of the manufacturing system. 

This system is the boast of England, — long may 
she continue to boast it before Spain shall rival her ! 
Yet this is the system which we envy, and which we 
are so desirous to imitate. Happily our religion 
presents one obstacle ; that incessant labour which is 
required in these task-houses can never be exacted in 
a Catholic country, where the Church has wisely 
provided so many days of leisure for the purposes 
of religion and enjoyment. Against the frequency 
of these holy days much has been said ; but Heaven 
forbid that the clamour of philosophizing com- 
merciaHsts should prevail, and that the Spaniard 
should ever be brutalized by unremitting task-work, 
like the negroes in America and the labouring manu- 
facturers in England ! Let us leave to England the 
boast of supplying all Europe with her wares ; let 
us leave to these lords of the sea the distinction of 
which they are so tenacious, that of being the white 
slaves of the rest of the world, and doing for it all 
its dirty work. The poor must be kept miserably 
poor, or such a state of things could not continue ; 
there must be laws to regulate their wages, not by 



422 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

the value of their work, but by the pleasures of their 
masters ; laws to prevent their removal from one 
place to another within the kingdom, and to pro- 
hibit their emigration out of it. They would not be 
crowded in hot task-houses by day, and herded 
together in damp cellars at night; they would not 
toil in unwholesome employments from sun-rise till 
sun-set, whole days, and whole days and quarters, 
for with twelve hours labour the avidity of trade is 
not satisfied ; they would not sweat night and day, 
keeping up this laus perennis ^ of the Devil, before 
furnaces which are never suffered to cool, and breath- 
ing-in vapours which inevitably produce disease and 
death ; the poor would never do these things unless 
they were miserably poor, unless they were in that 
state of abject poverty which precludes instruction, 
and, by destroying all hope for the future, reduces 
man, like the brutes, to seek for nothing beyond 
the gratification of present wants. 

How England can remedy this evil, for there are 
not wanting in England those who perceive and con- 
fess it to be an evil, it is not easy to discover, nor is 
it my business to inquire. To us it is of more conse- 
quence to know how other countries may avoid it, 
and, as it is the prevaihng system to encourage manu- 
facturers everywhere, to inquire how we may reap 
as much good and as little evil as possible. The 
best methods appear to be by extending to the ut- 
most the use of machinery, and leaving the price of 
labour to find its own level : the higher it is the better. 
The introduction of machinery in an old manufac- 
turing country always produces distress by throw- 
ing workmen out of employ, and it is seldom effected 
without riots and executions. Where new fabrics 
^ Perpetual praise. 



THE MANUFACTURING SYSTEM 423 

are to be erected it is obvious that this difficulty does 
not exist, and equally obvious that, when hard labour 
can be performed by iron and wood, it is desirable 
to spare flesh and blood. High wages are a general 
benefit, because money thus distributed is employed 
to the greatest general advantage. The labourer, 
lifted up one step in society, acquires the pride and 
the wants, the habits and the feelings, of the class 
now next above him. Forethought, which the 
miserably poor necessarily and instinctively shun, is 
to him who earns a comfortable competence, new 
pleasure ; he educates his children, in the hope that 
they may rise higher than himself, and that he is 
fitting them for better fortunes. Prosperity is said 
to be more dangerous than adversity to human vir- 
tue ; both are wholesome when sparingly distributed, 
both in the excess perilous always, and often deadly : 
but if prosperity be thus dangerous, it is a danger 
which falls to the lot of few; and it is sufficiently 
proved by the vices of those unhappy wretches who 
exist in slavery, under whatever form or in whatever 
disguise, that hope is as essential to prudence, and 
to virtue, as to happiness. 

Letters of Espriella, XXXVIII. 



OPINIONS AND REFLECTIONS FROM THE 
COMMON-PLACE BOOKS 

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS 

I INTEND to be a hedge-hog and roll myself up in 
my own prickles : all I regret is that I am not a por- 
cupine, and endowed with the property of shooting 
them to annoy the beasts who come near enough 
to annoy me. 

When the cable of happiness is cut, surely it is 
better that the vessel should sink at once, than be 
tost about on the dreary ocean of existence, hopeless 
of a haven. 

If Momus had made a window in my breast, I 
should have made a shutter to it. 

The loss of a friend is like that of a limb. Time 
may heal the anguish of the wound, but the loss 
cannot be repaired. 

A man is a fool if he be enraged with an ill that he 
cannot remedy, or if he endures one that he can. He 
must bear the gout, but there is no occasion to let a 
fly tickle his nose. IV 44. 

Sisters of Helicon — yours is a thankless service ; 
he who rears the olive of Pallas is well repaid — or 
the grain of Ceres — your votaries receive only a 
barren laurel to wave over their graves. jy, 273. 

424 



OPINIONS AND REFLECTIONS 425 

I lay no siege to impregnable understandings. 

IV, 685. 

Every one sees how preposterous it would be for 
his shoes to be made upon another man's last. And 
how many a one is there who thinks that his last ought 
to fit everybody's foot ! IV, 691. 

I have indeed worn my opinions for daws to peck at : 
but though many daws peck with impunity, those 
which I lay hold on, are not likely soon to forget the 
finger and thumb which have grasped them. 

IV, 693. 

Many who think they are proceeding at quick time 
in the straight forward march of an upright mind, 
are owing to a squint in the intellect, making all 
speed in a wrong fine. IV, 698. 

Some hearts are like certain fruits, the better for 
having been wounded. IV 504. 

I am afraid that more persons abstain from doing 
good, for fear of contingent evil, than from doing evil, 
in the persuasion that good may follow. /j^ 

Perhaps a degree of Christian holiness may be 
attainable in which the heart will not be accessible 
to evil thoughts. But we who are far from this 
must turn from them when they assail us, and never 
for a moment entertain them with the will's consent. 
And with regard to angry and resentful emotions, 
which oftentimes must, and sometimes ought to arise, 
the sin lies in giving utterance to them, in any other 
manner than is solely and certainly for the good of 
others. jj^. 



426 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

He who dives into thick water will find mud at 
the bottom ; no stream is clearer than that which 
runs over golden sands. lY , .^ 

LITERATURE 

Sonnets. — Unless strikingly good, immediately 
forgotten. They please us like the scenery of a 
tame country ; we look with pleasure upon a green 
field, and the light ash that bends over its hedges, 
and the grey alders along its clear brook side. But 
the next copse, or the little arch that spans the brook, 
effaces the faint impression ; and they in their turn 
yield to the following picture. But the woods of the 
Wye and the rocks of the Avon, even these we long 
remember, and years will scarcely blunt the recol- 
lection of the Tagus, and the heights of Lisbon, and 
the thousand -fold beauties of Cintra. ly, 258. 

Copying from Obscure Writers. — If there be a 
gem in the dunghill, it is well to secure it and set it 
where its brilliancy may be seen. More often the 
rudiments of a thought are found — the seed that 
will only vegetate in good soil, and must be warmed 
by the sun into life and blossom. So in this Milton 
has done — he has quickened grub ideas into butterfly 
beauty. 7j^, 

Poetical Ornaments. — These are not enough. If 
the groundwork be bad, they are like the rich colour- 
ing of a dauber's picture, like the jewels that bedizen 
a clumsy church-idol. To lard a good story with 
prettinesses, were Hke periwigging and powdering 
the Apollo Belvidere — and dressing the Venus of 
Florence in a hoop. /j^_ 



OPINIONS AND REFLECTIONS 427 

Devotional poetry usually unsuccessful, not because 
the subject is bad, but because it has usually been 
managed by blockheads. /jj^ 

A writer of original genius must wield language at 
his will. The syntax must bend to him. He must 
sometimes create — who else are the makers of 
language? IV, 259. 

Gothic genius improved every fiction which it 
adopted. Like torchlight in a cathedral, its strong 
lights and shades made every thing terrible, and as 
it were Hving. j^^ 

Works of fiction monstrous in kind, devilish in 
feeling, damnable in purpose. IV, 663. 

A book is new when, on a second or third perusal, 
we bring to it a new mind. And who is there who, 
in the course of even a few years, does not feel him- 
self in this predicament ? IV, 692. 

Herrick. — Of all our poets this man appears to 
have had the coarsest mind. Without being inten- 
tionally obscene, he is thoroughly filthy, and has not 
the slightest sense of decency. In an old writer, and 
especially one of that age, I never saw so large a pro- 
portion of what may be truly called either trash or 
ordure. The reprint of 1825 has in the title-page a 
wreath with the motto perennis et fragrans. A stink- 
ing cabbage-leaf would have been the more appro- 
priate emblem. . . . 

Herrick has noticed more old customs and vulgar 
superstitions than any other of our poets, and this 
is almost the only value of his verses. I question 



428 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

whether any other poet ever thought it worth while 
to preserve so many mere scraps, and of such very 
trash. 

He seems to have been a man of coarse and jovial 
temper, who was probably kept by his profession 
from any scandalous sins, and may have shown some 
restraint in his Ufe, though there is so very little 
in his language. 

There is not any other of our old poets who so 
little deserves the reputation which he has obtained. 

Herrick is the coarsest writer of his age. Perhaps 
Habington may deserve to be called the purest. 

IV, 303-305- 

"Harvey's drunken prose," properly enough so 
called, though perhaps maudlin might be the better 
epithet, the soft mood of semi-drunkenness. 

IV, 340. 

Tristan. — This romance has disappointed me, it 
is very inferior to Meliadus. The characters are 
in many instances so discordant, and the leading 
circumstances of the story so little consonant not 
merely with our ordinary morals, but our ordinary 
feelings, that the general effect of the book is far from 
being pleasant. There is something vile in produc- 
ing that love on which the whole history turns — 
by a philtre, — in making both the heroes live in 
adultery, — and in the unworthy usage of the second 
Yseult. That everlasting fault of the romancers in 
sacrificing the character of one hero to enhance the 
fame of another, is carried to a great degree here. 
With the creatures of his own creation an author 
may do what he will, but it is a literary crime to take 
up the hero whom others have represented as a knight 
of prowess and of worth, and to engraft vices upon 



OPINIONS AND REFLECTIONS 429 

him and stain him with dishonour. Palamedes is 
better conceived than any other personage in this 
book. IV^ 282 

Romances of Calprenede. — Whoever was the in- 
ventor of the French heroic romance, Calprenade is 
the writer who carried it to its greatest perfection. 

It is the fault of the romances of chivalry that they 
contain so many adventures of the same character, 
one succeeding the other, which have no necessary 
connection with the main story, and which might 
be left out without affecting it; in fact they are in 
the main made up of these useless episodes. The 
fault of Calprenade is of an opposite character : he 
ran into the other extreme, and his three romances for 
variety of adventures and character, and for extent 
and intricacy of plot, are perhaps the most extraor- 
dinary works that have ever appeared. There is 
not one of them that would not furnish the plots for 
fifty tragedies, perhaps for twice the number, and 
yet all these are made into one whole. For this kind 
of invention, certainly he never has been equalled. 

The old romances gave true manners, though they 
applied them to wrong times ; but the anachronism 
was of little import. Every thing in them was fic- 
tion. A double sin was committed by the French 
romancers in chusing historical groundwork, and in 
Frenchifying the manners of all ages, especially in 
the abominable fashion of fine letter writing. Story 
is involved within story, like a nest of boxes ; or they 
come one after another, so that you have always 
to go back to learn what has happened, and the 
main business seldom goes on ; this was inevitable 
from the prodigious number of characters which were 
introduced. 



43© SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

Pharamond was the romance which he composed 
with most care ; but he did not live to finish it. 
Seven parts of the twelve he printed ; the remainder 
were added by M. de Vaumoriere. The story is by 
no means so ably conducted as in the former part. 
I perceived the great inferiority before I knew the 
cause of it. IV, 280. 

Gongora is the frog of the fable, his limbs are large, 
but it is a dropsy that has swollen them. You read 
him, and after you have unravelled the maze of his 
meaning, feel like one who has tired his jaws in crack- 
ing an empty nut. The spider oars himself along 
the river, but woe to him if he be entangled in its 
froth. 11^ 2og^ 

Portuguese Poets. — Sa de Miranda never kindles, 
never dazzles, never agitates; but he enlightens, he 
enlivens, he pleases, he adapts himself to the dim 
sight of the little-knowing reader. Conciseness and 
perspicuity characterize his style, — he endeavours 
simply to express his conceptions in ready, not studied, 
language. The spirit of his thoughts embodied itself 
in the first shape that presented. It was indifferent 
to him whether he poured his wine into a golden goblet 
or an earthen cruise — the contents were the value, 
not the vessel — but the vessel was ever well sized 
and pure. He addressed the judgment, not the eye 
— wiUing rather to instruct the one, than to amuse 
the other. 

Of Antonio Ferreira, Horace was the favourite 
author. He devoted himself to useful poetry — 
the same severity of taste made him concise, and he 
ever attended less to harmony than to the brief ex- 
pression of his meaning. His pictures are graves, 



OPINIONS AND REFLECTIONS 43 1 

and somewhat rudely finished. Strong rather than 
sweet, he is animated and full of that fire which 
elevates the spirit and moves the heart. Except 
Camoens Ferreira most enriched the language. His 
imitations of the classics are numerous, — the fre- 
quent conjunction he first used, 

''Suspire, e chora, e canca, e geme, e sua." 

— more correct, more flowing, more elegant, than 
Sa de Miranda, he gave that atticism to the language 
to which Camoens gave the last finish. 

Ferreira introduced the verso solto into the lan- 
guage, a metre which only Trissino in Italy had 
used before him. Some of his chorusses are in Sap- 
phics, these innovations manifested taste conducted 
by courageous genius. 

Diogo Bernardes is easy, natural, more harmonious, 
more fluent than Ferreira, whom yet he imitated and 
called his master ; — but less correct and often negli- 
gent — yet gracefully. But Diogo Bernardes not 
content with imitating the fashion of Camoens — 
sometimes stole his cloaths. His language is fuller 
than that of his predecessors — the stream flowed 
freer for its copiousness. D. Francisco Manoel 
says he is a poet of the land of promise — all honey 
and butter. 

Pedro de Andrade Caminha has the rust of ruder 
times with a few spots of poHsh where he had rubbed 
against his contemporaries ; his four Eclogues are 
valueless in thought, and cold and feeble in style, 
the soul of a driveller in the body of a paralytic. 
His epistles are better, and contain occasional pas- 
sages of strong and bold morality and manly free- 
dom ; his funeral elegies are inartificial — not quite 
worthless; that to Sa de M. on the death of Prince 



432 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

de Joa5 is not bad — to Antonio Ferreira on his 
wife's death is sufferable — on the death of Ferreira 
himself the best; but they produce no effect, so 
clumsy the expression, so dead the style. Caminha 
struck the lyre with frost-bitten fingers ; his amatory 
elegies are dull and dry whinings, without fancy, 
without feeling, their sole merit is their shortness. 
His odes are his best production, either because not 
written in triads, or because they may have been 
touched by his abler friends, Sa de Miranda and Fer- 
reira. His epigrams are seldom faulty, his talents 
were only equal to an epigram — a steel workman 
who could only point needles. Caminha was a bad 
scholar. (He often contracts three or four vowels, 
and even as many consonants. To read such lines 
is to set one foot in a quagmire, and hurt the other 
against a stumbling-stone.) 

To the shame of these four poets be it spoken, 
that while they commended each other, and lavished 
praise upon every rhymer of rank, they never men- 
tion Camoens. Noble and opulent themselves, they 
only praised the noble and the opulent. Camoens 
though well born, was far superior in talents, and 
miserably poor. Talents and poverty ! ever ever 
the object of envy and contempt. They would not 
degrade their wealthiness by condescending to notice 
genius in misery, and genius in misery did not deign 
to notice them. 

Sa de Miranda painted strongly with few and poor 
colours. Ferreira flavoured with the spice of the 
ancients. Bernardes was more free, more bold, more 
abundant in images, more fanciful, more original ; 
but Kke the English Schakepeer, he produces the most 
monstrous extravagancies by the side of the greatest 
beauties. H^ 247-248. 



OPINIONS AND REFLECTIONS 433 

Camoens. — He treated the language like a man 
of genius, supplying its defects. To nouns only 
plural he gave a singular; changed the termination 
of proper names for the sake of euphony ; lengthened 
or abbreviated words, and made them from the Latin. 
"Sometimes," says Antonio das Neves, "he abused 
this liberty, and coined words almost macarronic." 
He revived obsolete words also. 

These are the merits which escape the notice of 
a foreigner. We look at Camoens as a dim eyed 
man beholds a cathedral. He catches the general 
plan, and the stronger features ; but the minuter 
parts, the numberless ornaments escape him : he 
sees an arch indeed, but the capital and the frieze 
elude his eyesight ; he beholds the battlements, but 
he cannot see the Caryatides that form them and 
their varying attitudes of beauty. We build with 
ready materials, but Camoens dug in the quarry, 
and hewed the stones for his edifice. n 258, 

Vieyra. — "Like Seneca, he corrupted the oratory 
of his countrymen, but not the language, which he 
alone enriched as much as all the poets." ^^ Dias 

Corrupted ! Vieyra is the Jeremy Taylor of 
Portugal. 

Can the Arte de Furtar be his ? It wants the flow, 
the fulness, the flood of language, the life, warmth, 
the animation of spirit. 

His is a rapid style ; he runs, yet is never out of 
breath : it is a current that hurries you on. A com- 
pressed sententious language would, in a fourth 
part of the words, express the meaning : perhaps the 
reader would not gain time : he must pause and pon- 
der as he proceeded, the galley may equal the speed 



434 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

of the brig, but the one sails easily along, and the 
other is impelled by the tug and the labour of arms. 

II, 259. 

POLITICS 

The divine right was a wholesome opinion both 
for prince and subject ; impressing upon both a sense 
of duty, from which no ill could follow, but much 
good might arise. IV, 665. 

The present race are what Johnson emphatically 
called bottomless Whigs. Their attachment to the 
most sacred institutions of the country is so lax, 
that no person knows how far the loose tether of their 
principles extends. IV, 666. 

They who set aside the consideration of religion in 
political matters, act like a physician who, in the 
treatment of his patients, should disregard all affec- 
tions of the mind. IV, 677. 

Man is the most valuable thing that this earth 
produces, and the moral and intellectual culture of 
the species ought to be the great object of govern- 
ment. — Moral economy versus political. IV, 694. 

ECONOMICS 

National wealth wholesome only when justly, 
equitably (not equally) diffused. When the work- 
man as well as the capitalist has his fair proportion 
of gains and comforts. IV, 662. 

Machinery tends to create enormous wealth for a 
few individuals. IV, 665. 

Manufacturers seditious when provisions are at 
a high price : the agriculturalists when they are cheap, 
and both classes showino; their total want of reverence 



OPINIONS AND REFLECTIONS 435 

and attachment towards the institutions of their 
country. IV, 667. 

The condition of the poor must be bettered before 
they can be improved ; that of the great must be 
worsened : i.e. birth and connections must not be 
passports to situations for which worth and ability 
are required. IV, 694. 

The political economists treat this subject as 
MacchiavelH treated the policy of princes, setting 
aside all considerations of morals and religion. 

IV, 702. 

RELIGION AND THE STATE 

It cannot be denied, but in this last age in most 
of our memories, our nation has manifestly degen- 
erated from the practice of former times, in many 
moral virtues and spiritual graces, which should 
teach us to render to God the things that are God's, 
and to Caesar the things that are Caesar's. Where 
is that integrity of manners, that truth of conversa- 
tion, that dutiful observance of order, that modesty 
of private life, that charity towards men, that humble 
devotion towards God, in which we can only say we 
have heard our nation once excelled? 'Twould 
be a melancholy employment to search into the 
causes of this unhappy change ; but whatever other 
occasions may have contributed to the continuance 
and increase of it, certainly the chief cause of the 
beginning of it was spiritual pride, — the want, nay 
the contempt of an humble and docile spirit. The 
different effects of this disposition, and of that which 
is contrary to it, have been abundantly tried in all 
histories, in all states, civil and ecclesiastical. Those 
countries and societies of men have ever most flourished 



436 SOUTHEY'S SELECT PROSE 

where men have been kept longest under a reasonable 
discipline, those where the number of teachers have 
been few in comparison with the number of learners. 
There was never yet any wise nation, or happy 
church, at least never any that continued long so, 
where all have thought themselves equally fit, and 
have been promiscuously admitted to be teachers 
or lawgivers. What can be the consequence of such 
a headstrong, stiffnecked, overweening, unmanage- 
able spirit? Can anything be more destructive to 
church and state than such a perverse humour, as 
is unteachable, ungovernable itself, and yet over- 
hasty to govern and teach others? Where children 
get too soon out of the government of their parents 
and masters, — where men think it a duty of religion 
to strive to get out of the government of their magis- 
trates and princes, — where Christians shall think 
themselves not at all bound to be under the govern- 
ment of the church, — must not all domestic and 
politic and spiritual relations soon be dissolved? 
must not all order be speedily overthrown, where all 
the true ways to make and keep men orderly are 
confounded? And what in time would be the issue 
of such a confusion? what, but either gross igno- 
rance, or false knowledge, which is as bad, or worse ? 
what, but a contempt of virtue and prudence, under 
the disgraceful titles of pedantry and formality? 
what, but a looseness of tongues and lives, and at 
last men taking pride in, and valuing themselves 
on such looseness? what but a disobedience to the 
laws of man, in truth a neglect of all the laws both 
of God and man ? — Query ?^ II 8 ' 

^ This editorial Query apparently refers to the authorship of the 
passage, but if it is not Southey's own, all the ideas at any rate are 
such as he would have unhesitatingly subscribed to. 

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